Subjects to Decay
by glenarvon
Summary: Gabriel Lorca is not as lost in this hostile universe as he might once have been. It doesn't mean he plans to stay there, not when there might be a way home. Sequel of "Blindfold King" and "The Immoral Game."
1. Too Tired to Sleep

_All human things are subject to decay,_

_And when fate summons, monarchs must obey._

_— John Dryden, Mac Flecknoe_

* * *

**SUBJECTS TO DECAY**

**by glenarvon**

* * *

**Chapter 1: Too Tired to Sleep**

Tyler woke up in protracted starts and stops, his sluggish brain taking stock of his surroundings without properly prioritising. He was hopelessly tangled in sheets that weren't his own. He was lying on something that didn't feel remotely soft enough to be his bed. He had not been murdered even though he had allowed himself to fall asleep in a place he now couldn't identify. The delicate scent of fresh coffee filled the air, his brain eagerly clamouring for it while his stomach turned slightly.

His smarts were at least able to tell him to continue to _feign _sleep, even as he realised his body had started to shift within the tangle of silky sheets. He wondered if just keeping his eyes closed amounted to the same thing as successfully pretending to still be asleep.

He still hadn't been murdered and he oddly didn't feel like it was going to happen, either. So with some leisure, he chased his fuzzy memories back step by step to help figure out where he was.

Last night… ah, dinner with the captain. Dinner with the captain, courtesy of delicacies and alcohol they had raided from a luxury liner just recently.

He caught himself groaning and the faint vibration set off an ache inside his skull. He opened his eyes, then squinted them tightly against the brightness of the streaking stars outside the window. He let himself fall back into the nest of sheets.

It turned out he was lying on the floor next to Lorca's bed, caught in his blankets, but he still couldn't remember how he'd ended up down there.

He groaned again as he struggled into a sitting position. The headache lessened somewhat once he got his head upright, which he counted as a win. Even his eyes were adjusting to the brightness, though he already knew it wasn't going to reach a comfortable level.

For reasons that only Culber was suited to even speculate on, Lorca _liked _exposing himself to too bright lights, even though his damaged right eye was worse off than the average terran. Indeed, Tyler spotted him on the récamier, facing the window, legs extended along the couch, cradling a large pot in his hands.

Tyler groaned again as he felt his head dropping back on the mattress behind him. "Uh…?" he said and supposed that was as eloquent as he was going to get.

Lorca turned his head and raised an eyebrow. He looked perfectly fresh-faced, clean-shaven and dressed, ready for his shift on the bridge. _Too _fresh-faced, in fact, after a night of drinking, unless one knew — as pretty much everyone did — that Culber had useful little pins for practically every problem in existence, including hangovers and lack of sleep.

Tyler hoped Lorca was going to share from his stash and save Tyler the trip to sickbay.

"Good morning," Lorca said and Tyler wasn't sure if there was any mockery there or not.

"Morning," Tyler replied with the barest scrape of politeness. "We… uh… we didn't fuck, did we?"

Lorca's expression didn't change, except his eyebrow climbed slightly higher.

"No," he said and passed a pointed look over Tyler's sleeping arrangements, as if that alone should've answered the question.

Tyler took in a deep breath, "Damn," he said and reviewed the situation again. While he could come up with a scenario that left him on the floor, blankets and all, he wasn't quite sure why he should've put his clothes back on and they had the clingy, dishevelled feeling of having slept in them.

"We got drunk," Lorca finally supplied, taking pity on Tyler's conflicted feelings — or at least his headache. "You wanted to show me what your Academy lecturer did once and then you passed out. I spent the night on the couch."

Despite himself, Tyler sniggered, "Ah, Miss Mori… yeah, that's a good one."

Explained the sheets, too. The woman had managed to strangle herself during a demonstration in the lecture hall. There had been some choice words for the class afterwards, who had been found cheering instead of helping. Eventually, it was determined that the incident was Mori's own fault and it had been irresponsible of her to expect help from her class without instructing them to render it beforehand.

The stars outside snapped back into pinpoints and Lorca took his gaze away from Tyler to watch the endlessness of space.

"Welcome to Yemuro," he said. "Let's hope our IFF code is still…"

The ship went to yellow alert and Lorca took a sip from his cup.

"…active," he finished dryly.

Yemuro was an M-Class planet. Its atmosphere was only partially breathable for humans, which forced the colonial cities to dig deep underground to save on maintenance of atmospheric domes. Yemuro was a mining planet, supplying not only dilithium but a number of other precious metals to the empire, which made the effort worthwhile, albeit unglamorous. To the empire, Yemuro was just an industrial shithole, full of alien workers, indentured terrans and their slave-drivers.

"Captain to bridge, report," Lorca ordered, still comfortably seated with no indication he was going to get up.

_"Our IFF signal was rejected by the automated buoys. Starfleet is sending a patrol boat to identify us. We've been ordered to hold position." _

Unfortunately, the Defiant remained the only ship of her class and specification, meaning that even a cursory scan would reveal who and what they were. Starfleet had rolled out a similar class of ships but the differences would still be obvious. They had bullshitted their way through checkpoints a few times but that only worked on the very fringes of terran-controlled space, where they could just as easily have blasted their way through. The military forces around Yemuro had too much firepower to take head-on and they had no interest in letting the wider empire know where they were operating.

"Let's not," Lorca said. "Cloak and go to warp, get us out of their sensor range."

_"Aye, sir. Chief Bell will complain about warping with active cloak." _

"She knows where to find me, she complains often enough," Lorca said unimpressed. "I'll be up to relieve you in half an hour. Lorca out."

Miranda Bell had taken to the position as chief engineer like a fish to water, even though she had only been trained as a mechanic and had janitorial duties on the Buran, as well as the prime purveyor of some damn fine moonshine. She was also, much to Lorca's constant chagrin, excessively pedantic about the precise wording of the manual. Tyler supposed it was the result of having little hands-on experience with starship engines or starships in general. Nevertheless, they had her to thank for even _having _a functional cloak. The original cloaking system had suffered damage to the point where Bell and the other engineers were reduced to shrugging and scratching their heads. It had taken stolen cardiassian intel and an experimental engine from a romulan resistance cell to patch things up. Neither group had been particularly keen to share their invention with a human pirate but Tyler was only glad they weren't cosying up to more alien splinter groups. Lorca had alarmingly few reservations when it came to dealing with aliens.

The lights dimmed as the cloak sucked up all available power and the engine's protesting hiss shuddered through the entire ship as the Defiant went back to warp.

Tyler struggled free from the blanket and tucked uselessly at his clothes, trying to get them into order somewhat, so he didn't look completely wasted for the walk back to his quarters.

With his mind slowly clearing a few more things clicked idly through his thoughts. With the exception of Ferasini, Lorca kept his hands off his senior staff. Lorca wanted his private affairs and his command to be as separate as he could make them without actually depriving himself of anything. While it was a large ship, it had a small crew, assembled by circumstance as much as necessity and it was a balance easy to upset by any aberrant behaviour. Lorca only tolerated such from himself, not members of his crew. All things considered, after two attempts at his life, Lorca was far more likely to let his chief of security sleep on his floor than his lover in his bed. Tyler doubted someone would be allowed to be both these things.

"Can I get one of Culber's pins?" he asked as he took a few careful steps forward to test his balance. He felt wobbly on his feet but thought he was doing a good job at not showing it. Lorca dissected and dismissed his acting with just a quick glance.

Lorca said, "I don't keep them around."

Spoken as if this was the very first time Tyler had been in his quarters, or anywhere where Lorca stayed. Lorca kept them in the right top drawer of his dresser. He kept them in the bottom left drawer in his ready room. He had them in a cabinet in the bathroom. He liked the ability to turn his mind on or off as the situation demanded it. Who didn't? The only reason for Lorca to lie about it would be if he had lost control of his habits.

Tyler clenched his teeth hard to keep the words on his tongue instead of saying them aloud. He did a bad job of it, though, because he caught himself sighing and then muttered, "Damn."

His tone earned him a sharper look from the captain, clearly warning him off from pursuing that argument even in the privacy of his own mind.

The thin slash of annoyance didn't leave Lorca's face as he regarded Tyler and Tyler decided to pick himself up completely and leave on his own, before he got thrown out. Lorca's mean streak might be less murderous than that of imperial captains but that didn't mean Tyler was willing to provoke it.

"I'll be going then, sir," Tyler said, carefully formal even if it seemed out of place.

Lorca only gave him a nod and dismissed him from his attention, turning back to face the window and the view, sipping his coffee. Out from under Lorca's perceptive gaze, Tyler breathed a little easier but he was aware that his reflection would still be visible in the window and he knew better than letting his expression get away from him. He set his steps carefully, not quite trusting his sense of balance to hold its own if he moved too quickly.

"We're still good for sparring this afternoon?" Tyler asked, almost at the door.

Lorca glanced at him with the quick flash of a genuine smile. It was something Tyler still struggled to get used to, Lorca's willingness to forgive minor infractions instead of holding on to petty grudges.

"'course we are," Lorca said. "Now get yourself some proper pick-me-up."

He aimed his chin at the space outside. "It's not going to be a quiet shift today."

Tyler resisted the urge to salute. Lorca would take and accept the gesture but Tyler knew him well enough by now to know he didn't _like _them.

"Sir," Tyler said and stepped into the sensor field of the door, letting himself out.

In retrospect, he was going to consider himself lucky that the door had already closed behind him, because it saved him from the humiliation of stumbling blindly backwards and dropping right back on Lorca's floor.

In the dimly lit corridor, a tall, dark shape lurked just across the door, setting off all sorts of instinctual warning bells before his aching brain managed to catch up with events and let him make sense of it.

Irsa stood silently, tall and too slim, utterly alien, threatening in ways Tyler found hard to put into words and was unwilling to even try. Part of him still didn't understand how these sorts of creatures even _existed, _how it was possible for them to talk and act and _think _when they weren't human at all. It was absurd and puzzling, like coming home and finding your dog wanted to argue philosophy with you.

"Oh shit," Tyler muttered. "Didn't see you there."

He wasn't sure why he felt the need to explain his reaction, even to cover for a blunder and save face. "I thought the captain had dismissed you for the night."

There had been some incidents early on, when the crew were settling in and getting their bearings and the first chance to think clearly and at leisure. As Irsa's owner, Culber had got into several heated arguments over what he considered property damage and what Lorca deemed unacceptable bullying. Eventually, Lorca's response had been to give Irsa a rank and position on the ship, making her his personal yeoman. But the truth of her position looked much more like Lorca's personal bodyguard. At least it made sense, after a fashion. Irsa was one of the few who had absolutely nothing to gain by turning against Lorca and everything to lose if she did. And even if she wanted to, there was no one she could turn to, no one to contact in the depth of imperial space who would take her seriously.

The crews' response to her promotion, which rendered her untouchable unless they wanted to poke Lorca the wrong way, was to treat her as completely invisible.

Irsa took too long to answer, her face shifted but Tyler had no clue how to read in a visage like that. The custom combat armour fit her like a second skin, sleek and black, making her look serpentine and ready to strike. It didn't seem to matter that she still behaved the same she always had, the quiet and demure manner, keeping herself unobtrusively out of the spotlight.

"I've returned early," Irsa explained, as willingly subservient as she had ever been. "The captain's shift starts soon."

Lorca had insisted she be given proper training and Tyler still remembered the initial shock when he realised how naturally strong she was, even before the training regime taught her how to use her strength.

She was silent for another moment, turning her head slightly to regard him better. She said, "I'm sorry if I startled you, sir."

Tyler allowed the scowl to slide on his face, just wide enough to show he had canines and she did not. If anyone needed to feel anxious, it should be her.

"It's nothing," he said.

He squared his shoulders and told himself he was just hungover and tired and his muscles hadn't recovered so well from sleeping on the floor. Marching down the corridor, leaving her out of his sight with what felt like reluctance, he made his way to sickbay to ask Culber for some helpful pins.

* * *

A little over half an hour later, Tyler sat on Lorca's left side in the conference room. There had been enough time to catch his bearings with the aid of a pin, a quick shower and a pot of replicated coffee. However, at the back of his head, there was still the gritty, raw feeling telling him he wasn't quite at the top of his game yet.

Ferasini sat on Lorca's other side, arms crossed over her chest and leaned away from the captain, creating a wider gap between them as they avoided looking directly at each other.

The rest of Lorca's command staff were grouped around the table. Chief Bell and one of her engineers named Kriger, Ops officer Alibali holding herself stiff and unnatural with the numerous implants and prosthetics that made her more machine than human. Irsa was also there, standing off to a corner and Tyler pretended not to think about her.

They were currently parked in the sensor shadow of a large asteroid, outside the search range of Yemuro's patrol ships but close enough they could make the trip back easily. Chief Bell had been concerned about the state of the dilithium crystals for some time but Tyler wondered whether it was really necessary to dim the lights, although his eyes were glad for the reprieve.

Next to him, Lorca was staring past Chief Bell's shoulder while she delivered an accusatory status report, scowling silently at the light panel, which flickered ever so slightly.

"Just to be clear," Bell was saying. "Hitting warp cloaked has put some massive strain on the dilithium and, in case you've forgotten, they are already nearly depleted."

She paused and looked around the table, self-satisfied in her delivery while Lorca stayed silent. Tyler could practically _feel _the frustration coming off the captain in waves. No one, certainly not Lorca, had quite expected just how tedious it would be to keep a ship the size and complexity of the Defiant running without any kind of support structure behind them. If something broke, they needed to scavenge it from somewhere and while in the depths of space there were plenty of easy targets to steal from, some components and materials were difficult to find or were only tenuously compatible with the Defiant's other systems. The replicator could not compensate for all of it, especially when it came to raw materials and the drain on their energy sources was just another problem that had no real solution.

When the silence kept on stretching towards general discomfort, Lorca said, "Options?"

"Not do something stupid like _cloaking _and _warping _at the same time when we're running on scraps already," Bell said.

"Thank you, chief. I'll keep that in mind," Lorca said without much inflexion. Tyler knew better than to snigger.

"How long can we stay right here?" Ferasini asked.

Lorca arched a brow and said nothing, which Bell took as permission to keep going.

"Pretty much indefinitely," she said. "In fact, at some point, we won't be able to get out of the asteroid's gravity anymore."

Visibly unperturbed by the answer, Ferasini said, "If we launch a shuttle, it could make the trip to Yemuro and back in about two weeks."

"Same difference," Tyler said. "No IFF."

"There are passenger and shipping lines running to and from Yemuro," Ferasini said. "We could hitch a ride alongside one of them."

"Tricky," Tyler answered. "But maybe doable. Needs good setup and preparation, though."

Lorca cleared his throat. "I prefer a more self-reliant solution."

"Well…" Bell said slowly, fixing a reproachful look at Lorca. He met her gaze and watched her wither.

A small measure of animation returned to Lorca, a puzzled frown crossed his face as if he hadn't meant to cow her into silence with just a look. He took the weight of his gaze off her and said, "Go on."

"Sir, do we really need to get down to Yemuro?" Bell asked. "We could just disable a freighter and take what we need from there."

Lorca lifted his gaze and made eye contact with Alibali, not quite unexpectedly so. Several weeks ago, they had received a coded message but Lorca had not deigned to share the contents with anyone, even Tyler, though it made sense he had had Alibali decode it.

"No," Lorca said. "I need to go planet-side."

It took a long moment for that to sink in and, quietly, Tyler said, "You, sir?"

Lorca slanted a faint smirk Tyler's way and said, "Exactly."

"That's a _fantastic_ idea," Ferasini said. "If you want to be arrested immediately. And we can all watch your execution on a forced, empire-wide broadcast."

The humour didn't leave Lorca's face, caustic as it was. "Is that a vote of confidence, doctor?"

"It's pointing out the obvious," she said. "Why does it have to be you?"

Lorca let the amusement drain from his face, becoming serious again, tension in all the lines of his body. With carefully measured calm, he said, "We need to pick up someone."

He looked at directly at Ferasini for the first time since they had entered the room and immediately, something sizzled between them, unbidden on both sides. "And yes, I'll do it."

"Who?" she demanded, voicing a question everyone — except Alibali, who might already know — was asking themselves.

"Too early," Lorca said and shook his head.

All of them, from Culber to Tyler to Alibali, even Ferasini, they all thought of themselves as Lorca's confidante. He had carefully set them up like that, from the casually shared meals he invited Tyler to his workout regime with Culber. Alibali was the only one who was privy to that decoded message when everyone else had been cut out of it. A round of chess in the captain's ready room with Kodos and a shot of moonshine with Bell. They all thought of themselves as Lorca's most trusted ally, the one person he would turn to in a moment of crisis — or weakness. Perhaps he even took Irsa into his confidence in some way, she was always close to him, sometimes the only one who was and his habitual treatment of her as an equal made the thought much less absurd. Most of the crew simply assumed the captain had a weird fetish. Tyler knew better.

It occurred to Tyler, now, looking from one of them to the other, that the only one who knew everything at all was Lorca himself. The only one on the ship irreplaceable was himself, because he had spent many painstaking hours in the mainframe, tailoring the very core of their computer to himself alone.

Lorca looked away from her, back at Bell, though his gaze passed over Kriger with a thoughtful expression. Tyler had wondered at the wisdom of promoting Bell so far above her station, wondering if Lorca's decision wasn't based on entirely the wrong woman's achievements, the one he'd known in his own universe. Kriger was a real engineer, better qualified than Bell in many ways.

"So, mission parameters," Lorca said. "Mr Kodos and I need to go down to the planet. Make that happen. How?"

By the looks of him, this was the first time Kodos had heard he was going to be part of the operation. He looked up at Lorca, eyes a little wider than normal, frown buried deep into his features. He wasn't a bad choice, all things considered, better versed in the workings of the empire's administration and civil organisation than any of them — and certainly better than Lorca. Kodos had taken on the role of diplomat more than once in their travels for this very reason. Bartering for refined dilithium on the black market wasn't a far shot off his normal duties. He didn't seem too happy to be the one leaving the ship, however.

Bell hesitated. "If we warp in, cloaked, and release a shuttle you could probably beam down from there before planetary defence has figured out what's going on. I'm not sure we'll have enough time to pick up the shuttle again, though."

Tyler really didn't like the sound of that, "They pick up the shuttle, they'll know what ship it came from. They'll put _everything _into lockdown and go through the whole planet with a fine-toothed comb. Don't underestimate the empire's efficiency."

"I don't," Lorca said lightly.

Lorca had even admitted to it, once, friendly and relaxed, a glass of romulan ale in his hand, heated to shimmer purple between them. _Compartmentalised trust, _Lorca had called it, with no small measure of sarcasm, mostly directed at himself. Another morsel of confidence for Tyler to bask in, almost an insult now that he got to think about it.

"Sir," Alibali said. "Yemuro employs DNA sniffers to maintain order on the surface. They are meant to ensure the alien population stays within their designated areas but they _will _pick up on you and raise an alarm. While they are only located at the exits and entries of quarters, they will be difficult to avoid completely."

"Criminals use a method called 'scrubbing'," Tyler said, himself not quite sure why he found himself in support of Lorca's plan somehow. "It damages the DNA over the body's surface, so the sniffers can't read it."

"Can we do this?" Lorca asked.

"I have no idea how it's done," Tyler shrugged. "Doctor Culber should know."

He paused to watch Lorca's profile against the dimming and brightening glow of the light panel, tried to read in the part of his face he could see.

Shrugging, Ferasini said, "Computer, get Doctor Culber on the line."

_"Culber here." _His face hovered in holographic light above the centre of the table, frowning.

"DNA scrubbing," Lorca cut in before Ferasini had a chance to say anything else. Their gazes were locked, though and it seemed to be taking effort for either of them to break the contact. "Can we do it?"

_"I can reprogram the decon chamber," _Culber said. His frown deepened as he stared at Lorca. _"You'll have to sit in it for about an hour, and you'll not look so pretty when it's done. It should be reversible but I promise nothing." _

"Set it up, I'll be down shortly."

Lorca ended the connection so quickly, Culber's affirmative was cut short.

The light of the hologram faded and Lorca looked from one to the other in silence. It was always an impressive display, watching him as he gave his gaze weight, so the people on the receiving end had no choice but to feel and acknowledge his power. Lorca rarely dealt in hidden threats, because the message was always plain.

Tyler angled his head back against the pressure and looked back at Lorca calmly, perfectly willing to do as ordered, knowing he had the standing permission to voice his misgivings and be heard. Whether Lorca then dismissed everything Tyler had said was an entirely different issue.

Lorca said, "Bell, calculate a route for us, get the Defiant in and out of the Yemuro system, drop a shuttle and _pick it back up. _Alibali can help with running the simulations if you need them. I want to know what strain it'll put on the dilithium but we'll have more than enough once it's over, so it's not the priority."

Bell nodded, face now serious, "Yes sir."

"Mr Kodos," Lorca said with a tiny delay as he shifted his gaze from Bell to him. "I know I didn't give you a lot of advance warning on this but I'm sure you'll manage. The message we've received contained contact details for a dilithium broker, who runs an illegal side business, that part will be forwarded to you. Prepare for Yemuro however you see fit. Don't forget the costumes."

Kodos nodded, managed a slight smile at the mention of costumes, "Yemuro isn't known for its fashionable attire, I'm afraid."

"Just make us blend in."

"I'll be ready by the time the scrubbing is finished."

Lorca arched a brow, "I'm sure you will, Mr Kodos."

"I'll handle your weapons and armour," Tyler said before Lorca had a chance to address him. "Yemuro is industrial, lots of rough types on the ground, you wanna blend in? You're armed."

And no one was going to stab his captain in the back on Tyler's watch, even if he was light-years away.

"What if we have to use them?" Lorca asked.

"Sir," Tyler said. "You're expected to use them. Security won't interfere in private scuffles. Just don't let it escalate into a drawn-out firefight in a public area."

"I'll do my best," Lorca said, amused.

Privately, Tyler found he was a little disappointed he wouldn't be there to witness it. Though, hot on the heels of that thought, he remembered just how exposed Lorca would be on Yemuro. Kodos was smart but he wasn't much use in a fight so Lorca wouldn't have any kind of backup if things went south.

"Captain," Tyler said slowly. "I request to join you on the ground."

Lorca tilted his head to the side, the curl of a smile at the corners of his mouth, though it didn't quite make it. The incessant flickering of the light panel caught Lorca's eyes, casting them into a sharper blue.

"Commander," Lorca said mildly. "Someone has to have the bridge. Someone has to make sure Mr Kodos, our passenger, myself _and _the dilithium are being picked up later."

Putting the emphasis on the dilithium, like Lorca suspected anyone but Tyler was at risk at abandoning him. They needed that dilithium but they also needed Lorca's leadership and Tyler was far from the alone in that understanding. Lorca wasn't ready to accept the truth of it, too enamoured with his own paranoia. In many ways, he was just another alien who thought he understood terran culture better than he actually did.

"I'll prepare an extraction plan," Tyler said. "And a backup one."

"While we're on Yemuro dealing on the black market, we'll just pick up passage with a smuggler and signal for you as soon as we're outside Yemuro's sensor range," Lorca said.

"I've been thinking along that line, too," Tyler nodded. "But I want to have something prepared in case you do _not _make it off Yemuro."

Silently, Lorca arched a questioning brow but didn't put voice to his surprise.

Ferasini chuckled low in her throat, giving Tyler a disdainful look. "We can't rescue anyone from Yemuro," she said. "It'd be suicide."

Tyler leaned back to regard her, giving back the same venom she was offering. "We've got through those before. We're just that good."

"That's a little boy fantasy."

"Who gives a damn?" Tyler said. "As long as it works."

Lorca shifted, gave both them a short look and even Ferasini accepted her role in the ship's hierarchy well enough to back down and leave the argument for later, or at least out of Lorca's earshot.

Lorca spread his hands out slightly, looking from one to the other. "Everyone's got their job," he said. "Let's get it done."

The dismissal rippled through them, prompting everyone into motion. He always left the conference room last, making sure there were no whispers happening without him, breaking them into pieces before they had a chance. As they trailed out and Lorca got to his feet, letting Tyler walk past him to the door, the commander said, "One security officer. Take at least one."

Lorca merely smiled. "More people means more exposure."

"More firepower."

"More liabilities."

"Just one," Tyler insisted. "Kodos isn't a fighter."

"Commander," Lorca said. "Do I really need to pull rank?"

As they spoke, Tyler had preceded Lorca through the door and noticed the shift in the captain's attention even before he registered Ferasini standing back against the wall opposite.

"No, of course not," Tyler said, straightened his back.

"Thought so," Lorca said, his voice quiet and his attention entirely on Ferasini.

Tyler bottled up the surge of anger at Lorca's dismissal and at his refusal to be reasonable. Also a little at whatever it was that had Lorca and Ferasini locked in a constant war, mostly it was cold, only to suddenly flare into blazing heat.

Tyler saluted, turned and left them there.

* * *

With Tyler's steps retreating along the bent of the corridor, Lorca tilted his head just slightly, never taking his gaze off Balayna but addressed his yeoman.

"Irsa, I know you've skipped breakfast again, head to the mess and grab a bite."

He had learned it was so much easier to simply tell her what he expected her to do. Dressing it up as a suggestion almost always confused her and giving her a choice led to her deciding on whatever she thought he wanted to hear.

"Yes, sir," she said quietly. Her hooves made dull thuds as she followed the corridor in the same direction Tyler had left, leaving Lorca and Balayna alone. Whatever resolve had carried him through the past weeks revealed itself to be as brittle as it had ever been.

He crossed the corridor and settled a hand into the wall next to her head, capturing her between the bulkhead and the wall and himself. She tilted her head back to look at him, the shadow of scorn across her face, close enough to see the faintest line cut across her face from an injury she had no chance to treat properly, because his mere existence had upset her entire life.

"Why haven't you killed me yet?" he asked.

He was so close, her scent filled his nostrils — how did they have the same shampoo? All the variables that had to fall just the right way, how was that possible? And why would the universe even bother? — too close to stop the avalanche of memories and, inevitable these days, the upsetting realisation that he might not even remember the right woman.

She opened her arms and raised them, a crease twitched in between her eyebrows, a moment of indecision or internal debate over her actions, passed too swiftly to leave any lasting impact. There were moments when all he could do was to stop himself from touching her. Sometimes _she_ didn't or wouldn't or couldn't stop herself, either. She settled her hands at his neck and dug her nails into his skin, fingers climbing up into his hair.

"Would you like me to try?" she asked in the cooing tone of an actual lover with the hissing of a hunter underneath. Relenting under the hard pull of her hands, he leaned in over her, teased a kiss and didn't deliver on it because it always riled her up so thoroughly.

He scrapped a breathless chuckle from his throat, fixed her eyes and shoved her trousers down to her knees. Unlike him, she wore normal clothes with minimal protection, easily dislodged in this unbroken fever. Now he suffered through his own paranoia when she struggled to palm him free of his trousers with just one hand. He hissed sharply at the rush once she did, cool air on heated skin and he held himself still for a moment, just enjoying the empty simplicity of the sensation.

Warily, she drew back, shifted her grip on his neck so her fingers held on to his spine like a handle, nails pricking as deep as she could. Her reaction amused him, if only because the only one he would torture by teasing her now would be himself. Perhaps it was a relief to know that even though she got under his skin, she still couldn't read his mind.

"The last one who _tried_," he said, matching her tone, the tangled mess of promise and threat, suffocating all his good intentions. "I…" he ran out of breath to finish the sentence.

Eagerly, she slung her knee around his hip, trapped uncomfortably by her trousers pooling and pulling down her legs. He gripped her thigh and hoisted her up, so starved for her he didn't need any guiding hand, only the grip of her shoulder and her leg, sheathing himself to the hilt.

The shock of contact, the sheer sudden bliss of it wrenched a strangled gasp from his throat, drowning out her pleased hiss. Her fingers flexed on his neck involuntarily while her other hand scrabbled for a better hold down his back, clawing past the waistband of his trousers to bury her nails into his flesh, looking for a hook by which to control his rhythm.

"I snapped his neck," he hissed breathlessly at her, the pretence of regaining control when it had already run away from him completely.

His hard thrusts dragged up her up the wall and she hung heavy against him as she lost touch with the ground, wringing a sound from him be barely recognised as coming from his own voice.

He wanted to kiss her, suck her tongue in his mouth, eat her whole, but instead he held his head back from her, against the iron grip she had on his neck, to focus on her face. This close, the fine line across it was clearly visible and he wanted to commit it to memory, burn it into all his senses.

He honestly had no idea which sick aspect of all of this turned her on so much, but right then, he couldn't have cared less, or second-guess how _she wasn't the only one. _He was too rough and too fast, dragging sounds from here that weren't purely pleasure, but her grip on him was unyielding, holding him in place, urging him on. The thought of slowing down, of _stopping_, whisked through his mind meaninglessly.

She was using the wall behind her to roll her hips into him, a contest for control which didn't matter because they were going at the same pace, still fitting together so perfectly even if she was entirely the wrong woman.

The fine red line in her face was all he could focus on, though his mind was empty, skull scrapped raw while his body felt like he was burning up from the outside in. Almost too soon, the hard pulse of mounting gratification took his breath, replaced his voice with a broken series of moans. He lost his rhythm, just chasing the sensation, barely noticed her anymore except for that red line in her face. She tried to steal a kiss as he shook.

"Don't… _ah_," she whimpered, sounding lost and desperate and he buried a hand between their quaking bodies, blindly fingering for her reaction until she hissed and shivered through her orgasm.

In the residual downward rush of his slowly abating arousal, for just a few moments, he felt calm enough to see the absurd humour in his situation and almost forget himself enough to try and share it with her. He couldn't fathom doing _this _— any of the things he'd done in this universe, if he thought things through — in this very corridor or any other if they were all still where they belonged. Yet, here he answered to no authority, faced no consequences for such inappropriate behaviour. Even if some crew-member happened to wander by, their reactions would vary only from indifferent to amused, perhaps even a sense of vindication of finding their captain to behave as a captain should.

Balayna slowly and deliberately removed her nails from his skin, smoothed her fingertips over the welts she had made and slipped her hands up to cup his face, snatched a kiss from his parted lips before he had a chance to deny her. The gentle touch startled him and he knew he gave it away, still locked together so tightly.

"You won't kill me," she said.

He knew the rules of this universe by now, knew that everything was a show of power one way or another. He could bend and subvert these rules a million different ways, but eventually, he would find himself abide by them or drown. So he arched his head out of her grip and looked down at her, shifted his body against her just that little bit harder, making sure she felt only him, and the solid wall behind her.

"_Try_ me."

* * *

Alone in the narrow confines of a bathroom not much later, Lorca cleaned himself up and ran a dermal regenerator over the scratches she had left.

Unbidden but not unexpectedly, he thought of the things he should have said to her. _When this crisis is over we really need to sit down and talk this through. _There had to be some sort of accord they could reach, some way for them to co-exist without slashing at each other. He had thought of promoting her. She had limited experience in space but it held true for a large portion of his crew and all of them were picking things up smoothly enough. She was incredibly smart, any version of her, there was no doubt she'd excel in no time. Having another one able to take the captain's chair competently would be invaluable in the battles to come.

He hadn't. Somehow the words just never came. It was just so much easier to antagonise each other, trapping each other in a vicious cycle in which suffering and satisfaction might just be exactly the same thing.

The faint ache from the scratches faded and he leaned his head into the wall, closed his eyes for a second and breathed. It smelled like a starship toilet, dry and dusty, air filtration somehow never quite able to make the narrow space comfortable. Just like home, really.

There were so many things he never could do or say here. He missed being able to trust his staff beyond the mere surface of their expertise and the necessities of their own survival. He wanted to kick back and talk to Culber like a real friend, because he suspected that's what they already were. He hated having to keep Tyler at arm's length, starving him for affection and acknowledgement, giving him just enough to keep him coming back for more instead of seeking it elsewhere. He wanted to have that difficult conversation with Leighton about their differing experience on Tarsus during the famine. Sometimes, he even wished he could talk to Kodos — _this _Kodos, who was not a mass murderer, amazingly enough — to hear his thoughts, not just surmise them from the moves he made on a chessboard.

He picked himself up, squared his shoulders against the barrage of thoughts and desires weighting him down. He straightened his civilian clothes like they were an actual uniform and left the bathroom.

* * *

_End of Chapter 1: Too Tired to Sleep_

* * *

**_Reference: _****"**Yemuro" is a star system/planet in the game Escape Velocity by Ambrosia Software.

* * *

**Author's Note: **I'm back to making myself miserable and making a public spectable of it. I'm sorry.

**Something I want to say about season 2: **After getting rid of Cornwell, all the'yve got to do is ditch Georgiou and I may consider watching it again.

Just kidding, I hate Discovery.


	2. The Struggle Against Error

**Chapter 2: The Struggle Against Error**

Sickbay's decon chambers resembled a slightly larger agony booth, merely offering the comfort of a metal bench to sit on and enough room to impatiently pace, as Lorca was doing barely two minutes after entering the chamber.

Culber sat behind the control station, monitoring the result. He'd set up the internal sensor of the chamber to the sensitivity of what a public sniffer would have, though he was eyeballing that particular value. Sniffers weren't known to be particularly precise instruments, serving more as a deterrent than an actual alarm. Still, Culber didn't want to learn what would happen if one of the things picked up a whiff of one Gabriel Lorca.

Meanwhile, Kodos wasn't even present in the database as a person of interest. In fact, despite his curious absence from Tarsus as either dead or alive, he'd been counted as a casualty and his record locked. What had been made of his last-minute appointment as governor was anyone's guess, but the most likely conclusion would be a total breakdown of leadership, going through the line of succession rapidly. Somewhat similar to what had gone down after Georgiou's death and the destruction of the Charon.

Culber leaned past the holo-screen and settled his chin into his hand, regarding Lorca for a little while, shamelessly self-indulgent, of course. He wasn't one who held himself to higher standards.

"Hey," Culber said and Lorca's pacing stuttered as he looked at Culber through the glass. "If you're bored in there, you could just enlighten me why you're in there in the first place. You could just send Tyler."

"He's hungover," Lorca answered blithely, raising his eyebrows as if Culber wouldn't already know and have helped take care of that little hiccup.

"Leighton."

"Not his skill set."

"Zhang."

"Engineers stay on board."

Culber opened his mouth to suggest some other security officer, but couldn't come up with a name fast enough. While there was a measure of trust between Lorca and his crew, not everyone should be left to their own devices on a planet like Yemuro. Selling Lorca out would be an easy task, possibly too easy for many to resist, especially if they ended up cornered in some way.

"Tyler is doing just fine," Culber finally said.

"Tyler has conflicting emotions about me."

"That's because you aren't even letting him have that pity-fuck."

Amused, Lorca said. "That's not what he wants."

Culber snorted, "Believe me, he'd take it."

"Tyler has the bridge," Lorca said with finality. "I'm taking Kodos to Yemuro with me."

Culber leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest, frowned at Lorca and studied him with a little more leisure. Although the man was likely to disagree, he didn't seem like his prolonged stay in a universe he so vocally hated had harmed him in the least. Culber wasn't a man who thought of himself as easily intimidated and he wasn't, people generally didn't _want _to harm him and he tended to have one up his sleeve in case they did, but Lorca, to put it quite bluntly, could be a scary bastard without even trying to be. He also had a functioning brain, last time Culber checked, leaving only a few options as to why they were having this conversation at all.

"Right, so what's going on?" Culber asked. Took out one arm and raised his finger at Lorca, "No deflections or I'll just leave you in there, are we clear?"

A slight smile slashed across Lorca's face, not entirely pleasant but with genuine humour nonetheless.

Lorca was thinking, or rather, he was _pretending _to consider it when he had already made up his mind.

"Fine," Lorca said. "I got a coded message from Marlena. She was transferred off the Charon right before things went bad. She's serving on the Enterprise now."

Lorca arched his brows as he added, "One of the ships based on the Constitution design, not one I want to meet in combat."

"Figures Marlena set herself up nicely," Culber said. "What did she find?"

Lorca flexed his shoulders as something irritated him, but he said, "Computer, access file Lorca-16120111-1, Dr Culber's terminal, one play."

The file announced itself on Culber's terminal and he gave Lorca a long critical look before turning his attention away from him. He stroked his fingers over the console and Marlena Moreau's face replaced the holo-screen.

_"My dear Captain," _Moreau said with a feral little smile, perfectly aware of the inappropriate intimacy of the address. _"I've come across this little tidbit of information I'd like to share. I couldn't get anything on the spore drive, classified to hell and back. But I did find out that Paul Stamets wasn't the only expert in the field. There was a rival called Straal who fell out of favour and died soon after. Stamets probably took all his research and used it for himself. But.. and that's the good part… Straal had a research assistant, she was in the files as 'Elizabeth Sennai'. I had to do some digging on that but turns out Sennai is an alien, some vulcan-romulan-whatever-crossbreed. I guess Straal covered up her race to stop some bureaucrat from getting nervous about having a non-terran attached to such a project. I first thought she'd died with Straal, but she's managed to weasel away. I've tracked her to the vulcan-romulan quarter on Yemuro. She works at a dilithium refinery. I have no idea if she knows anything useful." _Moreau tilted her head. _"But it's the best lead I've seen since… ever. Check it out. Don't get killed." _

"She's attached Sennai's work registration file so we know where to find her," Lorca added while Culber was still musing on how much a few short months had matured Moreau. Though it shouldn't be surprising that Moreau had not only escaped but was doing well for herself. Culber wouldn't be surprised if she had the Enterprise's captain wrapped around her little finger very soon.

Culber cast a glance over at Lorca, who was rubbing his neck and taking a few steps up and down the small enclosure.

"You've told no one about this," Culber said, making it not quite a question.

"Alibali knows," Lorca said. "You do, now. Officially, our only interest in Yemuro is the dilithium. It'll stay that way."

Lorca's face darkened and he said, "It's not a lie, we really need the dilithium."

Lorca dropped his hand from his neck, frown deepening as he turned to pace another few steps and Culber finally noticed what had Lorca so distracted. Culber had put it down merely to the effect of the scrubbing, which would leave Lorca feeling like his skin was getting too tight for his body, dry and brittle and uncomfortable as the cells' genetic structure was distorted. However, the red-welted lines on Lorca's neck and buttock were clearly scratch-marks reacting to the treatment by obvious inflammation.

Just to be sure, Culber cast a glance at the readout on his terminal. The load of identifiable DNA hadn't been going down at the rate Culber had expected. At least it made sense now.

Culber said, "Had some fun earlier, huh?"

Lorca turned back, frowning and saying nothing, probably because there was no good defence to be had.

"You see," Culber explained, entering lecture mode gleefully, raising both pointer fingers at Lorca. "Dermal regeneration and surface scrubbing don't mix. Newly regenerated skin can't handle it. As you can probably tell by now. ."

Lorca stepped towards the glass, now holding himself still, frown deepening. "So do something about it," he said.

Culber sighed, "I can't. I mean, it'll spread DNA everywhere, even the worst sniffers are going to catch on. But it's a small area, so I'll just put a patch over it and it should be fine. Just…" he waved his hand for emphasis, "keep your collar and your pants up."

Satisfied with the solution, Lorca merely nodded, rubbed at his neck absent-mindedly, then dropped his hand as he resumed his pacing once more.

Curious how long it would take Lorca to ask _how long it would take, _Culber offered no estimate of his own volition, chasing his own lines of thoughts. The one time Lorca had truly struggled with his new circumstances had come several months into his command. One of the people who had, as Lorca tended to emphasise, _chosen _him, had turned out to be an imperial agent. Originally placed to infiltrate this universe's Gabriel Lorca's organisation, he had seized on his chance to deliver a different prize to his superiors. Secretly, he had installed a tracking device in the ship and had been close to plug it into the Defiant's communications systems. If he had been able to activate it, the Defiant would have broadcast its designation and position across all subspace channels across the empire.

That had not been the problem. Lorca must have expected something like that and in fact, he was _always _expecting something like that. However, he was ill prepared for the way his crew expected him to respond.

Starfleet's penal code required severe punishment for wholesale treachery on the level of endangering the entire ship and crew. As it were, there was no other possible punishment than death, although the code allowed captains some leeway as to the method of execution or even whether they would execute the perpetrator immediately or if they were to spend some time in agony beforehand. Though, traditionally, traitors were beamed into the cold emptiness of space. Except, Lorca had refused even to listen to the idea. Instead, he'd kept the traitor locked up in the brig for days while the murmuring confusion of his crew built into audible discontent.

In the end, all Lorca had done was take a phaser to the brig and shoot the traitor, jettisoning his ashes into space and never speaking a word of it to anyone. No one was happy with the result, not Lorca, not those of his crew who were disappointed in his timidness and not those who might secretly hope he represented a new style of leadership.

"Why won't you tell us?" Culber asked into the silence.

Lorca gave him another frown.

"The truth," Culber clarified. "Everyone can figure out you aren't going to the planet for just a bunch of crystals."

Lorca just kept watching him, eventually, he shook his head and turned away. "If you can't work it out on your own, you don't need to know."

Culber smacked the release button and the air hissed as the decon chamber vented its atmosphere. At Lorca's frown, Culber said, "The scratches need to go."

The annoyance at the dismissive answer he'd been given gnawed away at Culber's mood, distracting him to the point where he didn't even remember making a lewd comment as he applied the transparent patch to the welts on Lorca's skin.

Surely Tyler could be trusted? Conflicting emotions or not, if Tyler had the bridge and he was operating on incomplete information, all sorts of things could go wrong. At least the command staff needed to be briefed on the facts so they could give the right orders down the line. Lorca was being secretive for no other reason than the old adage of _knowledge is power_. And now Culber was an accomplice. If he were an imperial captain, Lorca would have done well for himself, but Culber decided to withhold that barb until the moment he could really make it hurt.

Patched up and back in the chamber, the readable amount of DNA dropped quickly. Culber watched it sullenly, arms crossed over his chest, waiting in vain for Lorca to pick up the trailing threads of the conversation.

The terminal announced completion and Culber hit the release again. Culber pointed at the bed and said, "Sit."

Although it wouldn't have made sense for Lorca to resist and it would have been unlikely for him to bark at the tone, Culber felt a slither of satisfaction at Lorca's tame compliance with the command.

Culber picked up a handheld scanner.

"Watch," Culber said, flicked his gaze over Lorca's face only to find passive expectation there. "Scanner set to emulate a sniffer."

He passed the scanner over Lorca's chest and received nothing. Just to be sure, he reached out and brought it close to his neck, but to the same result. The effect of the scrubbing meant the scanner not only couldn't decode the DNA, it didn't even identify it as DNA in the first place, so it didn't even produce an error.

"Now, any normal scanner will do this," Culber snapped the setting back and even without aiming for Lorca, the scanner immediately identified him. A holographic image was projected above the device, displaying Lorca's face and information and the brightly flashing warning that marked him as 'Enemy of the Empire'.

Lorca dropped his gaze to the display. "Why am I not dead?" he asked.

"_Lorca_ was on the Charon when it blew up," he added. "Wasn't he?"

"That's what Marlena said."

"Everyone else on that ship has been declared dead."

"I know where this is going," Culber said, keeping a snarl from his tone by sheer force of will. "But the truth is, it's simply very convenient. Not for you, obviously, but for the new emperor. Captain Lorca is a handy threat to help keep things together. Nothing unites better than a common enemy."

Lorca slid from the bed and stood straight. He flexed his neck as if to test the patch, but said nothing.

"You should be good for about a week, two if you keep your distance from the sniffers and don't pick on your skin," Culber explained. "Kodos sent over clothes for the masquerade."

Lorca nodded. "Lorca to Alibali, how are we doing?"

_"We are nearly done, sir. Preparations should be finished in less than an hour." _

"That's what I like to hear," Lorca said as he picked up the clothes and started to dress. "We'll move as soon as everyone's ready."

_"I'll keep you briefed, sir." _

"Good," Lorca said. In his hands, a shapeless tan coat unfolded. "Lorca out."

He left the coat off for now and fixed his gaze on Culber.

"I'll need a full set of pins," Lorca said. "For bartering."

Culber nodded and went to the cabinet where he stored the pins. He retrieved the small, metal casket and handed it back to Lorca who put it on top of the coat.

"The crew's talking about that," Culber pointed out.

"They are meant to."

"I'm not sure you've thought that through all the way," Culber pointed out. "Faking a drug addiction can go wrong in so many ways. Even if it's a weakness that doesn't actually exist."

"You're just worried someone is coming after you to get to me," Lorca said with an unpleasant smile threatening the corners of his mouth.

The thought had crossed Culber's mind, but he wasn't unduly worried about it. What bothered him was more how it undermined Lorca's own position as the smartest possible person to be giving the orders. Terrans knew how to follow orders given by idiots, of course, but usually only for as long as it took to remove that idiot from power. Lorca was provoking another attempt at his life and fuelled it with doubt of his own abilities. Doubt which would forever stick in some small measure, no matter what else he did.

"You'd make a fantastic imperial captain," Culber said. "But maybe not one of the smart ones."

The humour, or whatever effigy of it had been there, slowly drained from Lorca's face until all that remained was an intimidating sort of composure. "Is there an issue you wish to address, doctor?"

It took some measure of willpower to actually remain standing where he was, facing Lorca.

"I _have been _addressing all the issues," Culber said, tone clipped. "You don't listen."

Lorca just looked at him, eyes narrowed ever so slightly, but Culber could tell Lorca was actually thinking, running his mind through their conversations, the points Culber had raised and Lorca had dismissed, now re-evaluating it all in the span for mere moments. The scrubbing had left the surface of his skin with a strangely waxy appearance, which would turn to look like a bad sunburn and then an ugly rash as the body finally rejected the altered cells and shed them. Most of his hair would do the same, though it would take a little longer. Culber was a little vague on the long-term effects of scrubbing. It was a method used by criminals and spies, not a group of people likely to live long enough to worry about delayed problems.

"Now is not the time," Lorca said. He picked up the pins casket and the coat. "But…"

The hesitation alone made Culber listen up.

Lorca said, "Can I trust your issues with me, they'll stay between us?"

Despite himself, Culber snorted a laugh. "Don't be an idiot, I mean, for real. I just called you one, but we both know that's not true. I'm not going to backstab you, for fuck's sake!"

It looked like it took some effort for Lorca to nod, though whether it was an affirmation or merely the acknowledgement of having heard the outburst was anyone's guess. Doubt and hope briefly swam through Lorca's eyes before he shut down whatever emotional response he might be having.

He shrugged it off.

"Remember that," Lorca said, though just mildly enough to take the sting out of what could easily have been an earnest warning and a threat he would be following through with. Culber did _not _throw his arms up in exasperation, at least not until Lorca had left the vicinity.

Culber huffed angrily in the empty silence of Lorca's wake, dissatisfied with the encounter on all possible levels. He just hoped Lorca knew what he was doing — or at least had his wits about him when things went sour. Culber really didn't want to find out what would happen on the Defiant if Lorca didn't return.

Though, he was equally unhappy at the prospect of finding out what would happen on the Defiant if Lorca continued to slip into whatever mental dark hole he was so keen on digging himself into.

"Fuck you," Culber said, tossed the scanner away. "And fuck me, too."

* * *

Until she had met Lorca, Noor Alibali had never explained to anyone what her brain implants felt like. No one had ever shown much interest in them, not even the doctors who had implanted them after she'd suffered severe nerve damage in a rebel attack on her home colony. The doctors had been content with her appearing to be functional. The right side of her body had burned away in the acidic spray of the explosion, damage too extensive to heal, so robotic replacements took the place of her crippled limbs.

After waking up that first time, it had taken her mere minutes to realise what it would mean, being only half human anymore. Her career would be hampered at every turn, faced with scorn and disdain at being reduced to barely more than a machine.

She had wondered, since meeting Lorca if the _other one, _the one whose cause she had joined without ever seeing him, would have given her this much attention. She was a member of the senior staff, subordinates under her and only few people left who would dare side-eye her or bad-mouth her too loudly. Lorca trusted her with information he was giving no one else. She was the only link between him and his agent, Moreau, the only one who could decode the messages.

It seemed she had made the best of herself, after all, the best she could do and it didn't look so shabby, even if there was no recognition outside the confines of the ship and her crew. It was enough.

But then, there was Airiam. The Emperor. The _new _Emperor, who was more machine than Alibali herself by all accounts. And far more successful by any measure one might put to it.

She had put thinking about that permanently on hold, though because only part of her brain was artificial, the rest did not quite obey these orders and would sometimes slip into contemplation, taking her implants with it, so far her flights of fancy turned dark and sinister.

Her augmented mind parsed through the information the databanks provided on Yemuro, faster and more efficiently than a purely human mind could. After so long, it felt natural, even through the strain on her implants left her with a strange, hot sensation inside her skull. It was an entirely imaginary perception, of course, her brain tissue could not feel anything.

"Is everything ready?" Tyler asked with a slight rotation of the captain's chair to glance at her station. The Defiant was keeping position just outside Yemuro's sensor range.

Alibali's terminal was the nerve centre of the operation, it's stoic coldness reassuring against the insistent impression of white-hot shards had been buried in her head. Everything she could control, she would, everything she could predict she had accounted for. Everything else just hung in the, variables waiting to be set and she could only hope she could incorporate them with that very narrow span of time she had at her disposal to adjust their course of action.

"Ready to go, sir," Alibali said. In the end, it would Tyler who made the calls, not her. She could only hope he was up to the task in the same way she would be.

"Captain?" Tyler asked.

Lorca's voice filled the bridge through the comm channel, making himself through his very absence.

_"Still manoeuvring in the shuttle bay," _he said. _"Haven't done this in a while." _

Tyler arched his brows. "I did offer you a pilot."

_"It was a great vote of confidence," _Lorca said.

Alibali wondered if the humour was genuine or if Tyler would face a reprimand for this slice of insubordination once Lorca returned. No captain could stay in charge if he allowed too much leniency in his crew. Lorca tended to be laid-back about it, but perhaps he was just more discreet than most.

When Lorca spoke again, his tone was conversational, almost as if he was just passing the time.

_"Have I ever told you about how I lost my ship?" _he asked. _"The Buran, the one in my universe, when another Captain Lorca attacked us. Did I?"_

Tyler needed a moment to figure out the question wasn't rhetorical. "No, sir, you haven't."

_"We were at war with the klingons at the time, when they take prisoners, they parade them around, public humiliation, public execution. I wasn't going to let that happen to my crew. I asked Starfleet Command to install a second self-destruct system. My request was denied, they didn't like the concept. You know what I did?"_

Tyler avoided making eye-contact with anyone on the bridge, no doubt harbouring his suspicions on why Lorca was regaling them with this particular tale. The captain's casual tone hadn't changed, but the deep rasp in his voice added weight to his words.

_"I installed it anyway. But I didn't need it for the klingons. It was your another Captain Lorca and another Buran," _Lorca laughed a little at the irony of it. _"When I realised I'd lost, I used it. Should've been the end. I called it a dead man's switch, but it was a bit of a misnomer. It was just a self-destruct without the off-switch."_

He paused, just for a moment. Alibali watched the on her monitor as the shuttle finished positioning itself with its rear-end towards the shuttle bay doors, hovering already with the aid of its thrusters.

_"This time, I got something much closer to it. The Defiant will never have another captain. But it's nothing you need to worry about just now. I'll be back in ten days, after all." _

Another pause, thin, like the edge of a blade. _"Ready." _

Alibali snapped her attention down on her console while the rest of the bridge crew hastily collected themselves from the muffling veil Lorca's narrative had wrapped around them and subdued them. She knew what Lorca was saying, even if the true meaning had eluded her until now. Lorca had asked her to help with some of the adjustments he made to Defiant's mainframe, the integral computer system controlling everything on the ship. She had known he was making it impossible for someone else to take over the way he originally had, but she hadn't understood the lengths he would go to to ensure no one would turn against him in his absence.

He couldn't hamstring the actual command of the ship without crippling it, someone had to be in control, but that someone might be tempted not to hand that control back. Leaving the ship for the first time since he had taken it was a risk, one Lorca had found a way to mitigate, or at least equip it with built-in revenge. And he had just told the entire bridge crew about it.

By the beginning of the next shift, everyone on the ship would know.

Alibali wondered if she, or another computer engineer, could reverse whatever Lorca had done. After all, there were many reasons for him not to return which had nothing at all to do with mutiny on the Defiant.

For her, the switch from internal contemplation of a potentially grim future was probably slightly easier than for the rest of the crew, but she noticed barely a second delay for at least Tyler to remember where he was. Settling his hands on the controls in his armrest, Tyler confirmed and gave the order to cloak, then go to warp.

The warp drive revved up to speed, bringing the cloaked ship back into Yemuro within less than four minutes, when they had to slow down to avoid collision in the tightly packed space. Numerous ships of all sizes, data buoys and satellites, armed defence platform littered their path. There was always a chance if they got to close, they could raise an alarm, or at least cause a sensor disturbance that someone would want to investigate and while the cloak was effective, it wasn't without its flaws.

"Approaching Yemuro," the helm announced. "Bringing us into stable orbit."

"Slow and steady," Tyler said. "We don't want to give them a scare. Yet."

The helm and navigation controls had been hot-wired to link them together, allowing just one crew-member to fly the ship, a necessity brought on by their small crew complement. The officer acknowledged the reminder, though he almost certainly didn't need it.

The Defiant found a spot in orbit, just south of the equator, at the edge of the busiest parts around the two space elevator spikes which allowed for constant supply to and from automated freighters along the bristles of their docking bays.

"Passive sensor sweep," Tyler ordered. "Let's find a good transporter location."

The information came in in overabundance, not a particularly militarised planet and with much of it populated by civilian operations, control of signals wasn't as tight as it could have been. Yemuro was entirely covered by industrial parks, raised over mining facilities supplying them with raw materials. City structures and towering, cobweb-like living quarters weaving between them. Essential areas were blanked out, military installation and security checkpoints, secret research labs, all of which were protected from direct transport by a scattering field, but most of the public areas offered no resistance to a transporter beam.

The moment the shuttle left the protective area of the cloak, it could be tracked and so could any transporter beam emanating from it. Moreau's message had contained several possible locations and the passive sensor sweep confirmed and refined the information. Alibali selected an area near a transport hub, where people would be packed thick, most of them in a hurry and not everyone with legal business. Even if the transporter destination was tracked, it would allow Lorca and Kodos to get lost in the crowd quickly.

Alibali transmitted the final coordinates to the shuttle and received a non-verbal confirmation from it.

"Alright," Tyler said. "Deploy the shuttle."

The shuttle, already in position, slowly drifted backwards with only a slight push by its navigational thrusters, bringing it out of range of the cloak.

Almost immediately, Yemuro's tracking systems registered the newcomer, invasive scanners went over the area. There was no attempt to hail the shuttle, defence platforms in range immediately took aim.

"Transport complete," Alibali announced. At the same time the transport had displaced Lorca and Kodos to the planet, the shuttle's autopilot kicked it, accelerated it forward and back into the open shuttle bay.

"Torpedo!" Alibali warned. "Locked onto the shuttle."

Even as the shuttle vanished from the torpedo's sensors, it's on-board computer was powerful enough to simply calculate its target's most likely trajectory.

The shuttle crashed into the bay and the doors began to close even as the Defiant shifted its position to make a run for it. The torpedo hit the closing doors, unprotected by anything but the thin atmospheric shield. The impact shook through the Defiant, crawling through all the decks right up to the bridge, setting off sparks in the consoles. The cloak wavered at the sudden breach in the power distribution.

"We are being targeted," Alibali said.

"Time to get out of here," Tyler said. "Let's punch through, warp one."

There was no way they could navigate the tightly packed space at warp one, but the helm officer had plotted a comparative safe passage through the mess, minimising the damage they would sustain.

Bell managed to get the cloak back up while Alibali tracked with some concern the spreading damage the torpedo had left. The shuttle-bay door had deflected some of the explosive power, but the bay itself was in ruins, causing a chain reaction of explosions eating through the belly of the ship. Emergency containment was struggling to contain them as both the warp drive and the cloak sucked up all available power.

The Defiant jumped to wrap, leaving a thin trail of damaged, smaller spacecraft in its wake as they collided with it on the way out.

"That definitely scratched the paint," Tyler remarked at a particularly hard impact, gaze on the terminal in his armrest that told him of the severity. The Defiant hurled away from Yemuro's monitored and controlled space, looking to gain a safe distance before they dropped the cloak.

Engineering's reports stacked up in increasing intensity, but Alibali knew better than devoting much of her attention to them. Bell and her repair crews knew their job, her interference could only distract them. Instead, Alibali watched as the swarm of pursuers that Yemuro had launched after them lose their trace in the vastness of space, outmatched by Defiant's speed and the power of her cloak. She gave them an additional twenty seconds at full warp, estimating they could either handle it or it wouldn't matter either way.

"We've lost them," she finally announced.

"Drop the cloak," Tyler ordered immediately. "Get us down to impulse."

"Yes, sir," the helm officer said.

Tyler cast a long glance at Alibali. "Keep an eye out, I don't want any surprises."

"Yes, sir," she confirmed.

"And let's have that damage report," Tyler added, though he was clearly already watching the gist of it on his own terminal. In fact, the way the Defiant was still shuddering must be more than enough of a hint as to the state of the ship.

"Massive damage to the shuttle bay and decks 17 through to 22," Alibali said. "Plasma splatter is eating into the ship. We have fires spreading up to deck 15, but we've nearly contained it. We have no reports from the sections nearest the shuttle bay, I suspect they are completely destroyed, but life support remains stable."

"Containment fields?"

"Holding," Alibali said, frowned as her implant felt overheated, left her with the urge to do her thinking with the human part of her brain. "Not sure for how long, I'm afraid. There are too many variables to calculate."

"Well, I'll take a rough guess on whether we'll blow up right now or later," Tyler said, a wry undertone in his voice which made Alibali remember the threat Lorca had left hanging over all of them.

She eyeballed the data on her screen, fixated on the report that had just stolen itself to the top of the priority list, where Bell herself announced the plasma splatter had managed to do damage to the right nacelle, probably in tandem with the strain of rapid acceleration and equally rapid deceleration just before. She queried engineering for clarification on the status of the warp core. It was, at least for now, stable.

"Later," she finally said and looked up at Tyler briefly.

He nodded. More to himself, he muttered, "Hopefully much later."

Louder, he said, "Let everyone know R&R is cancelled, I want every crew member working on containing that mess. By the way, do we have casualties?"

"Seven crew-members are not reporting in," Alibali said. "Sickbay is reporting twenty-one emergency aid requests. Sickbay hasn't given any status reports yet."

Tyler seemed satisfied with this, though his expression remained grim. Perhaps more in memory of Lorca than the lost crew-members. It wasn't a number that threatened the functioning of the ship, but it was going to make itself known when the new shift schedule had to be set up.

"Bridge to engineering," Tyler said and the channel opened.

_"Engineering," _Bell's voice answered, sounding ill-tempered and winded, like she was working underneath a console and inhaling acid smoke. Alibali guessed she was.

"When can we go to warp?"

_"Sir, we can't maintain integrity at warp, not right now. Not for a few hours. Not for a few _days."

"We have to rendezvous with Captain Lorca in ten days," Tyler reminded her, paused as he obviously considered sharing the likely consequence if they didn't. "What about the cloak?"

_"Do you want me to laugh?"_

"I _expect_ you to be professional," Tyler said, sharper.

There was a long pause, then an audible hiss as Bell braced herself. When she spoke again, she sounded a little better, perhaps she had got up from underneath the console.

_"Sir, a torpedo just fucked a giant hole into us. If we go to warp in that state, we disintegrate. I can fix it, but I need some time. But there's no cloak. The power distribution is shot all to hell, there's no cloak. It won't even explode if we engage it. It'll just do nothing."_

She paused again. _"Professionally speaking, sir." _

Tyler's mouth was a thin line of displeasure, at her assessment or her attitude, though most likely both.

"So we're sitting ducks," he said. "Are you a duck, Chief Bell? Do you want to get eaten?"

Bell had the sense to take the thin sliver of insult without defending herself. She might be indispensable now, but that would change, especially if she did her job.

"Fix the warp drive first," Tyler finally said. "Than the cloak."

He sucked in a deep breath, "So we can at least run and hide if they catch up."

Alibali had never quite considered how uncomfortable it must be to sit in that chair and realise how utterly helpless a captain fully in charge of his own ship could be. A lessen maybe Tyler hadn't considered before, one _none _of them had considered before, Alibali was sure of it, while Lorca had been there.

* * *

_End of Chapter 2_

* * *

**Author's Note: **Long wait, short chapter, bad technobabble, but a naked Lorca, so I guess things worked out in the end…


	3. This Alien Shore

**Author's Note: **Long wait and Lorca is fully-dressed throughout. Honestly, I have nothing to say in my defence.**  
**

* * *

**Chapter 3: This Alien Shore**

Lorca took the two ale-filled nano-plastic glasses from the sullen vulcan behind the bar counter. The glasses were brimming with froth, he leaned down to suck the top layer into his mouth before it got a chance to spill all over his fingers. If he had expected the taste to be an improvement over mostly replicated food and drinks, he would be disappointed. The froth tasted bland and papery, peppered with sour alcohol.

He took the glasses back to the table off in a corner, felt the alien gravity of the planet tug on the muscles in his legs, threatening his balance ever so slightly. He felt heavier than he had on the Defiant, still struggling to adapt to Yemuro's environment.

He put the glasses down, then slid into his seat opposite Kodos and angled himself so he could survey the entire room — and especially the entrance.

Kodos had diligently prepared for their cover, as per Lorca's instructions. Lorca's large coat, while it gave him the vague shape of a barrel, allowed him to easily conceal any number of weapons. It made him look larger, too, especially next to Kodos' slighter frame and slightly more elegant, tailored clothed. An off-world businessman and his bodyguard. Most of the focus would settle on Kodos as the apparent leader, allowing Lorca the luxury of observation. It also helped keep anyone from recognising Lorca by his face alone, which unfortunately happened to be fairly well-known. He had pulled the collar of his coat up, helping disguise the line of his jaw and part of his face was hidden behind the medical eyepatch over his right eye. Its built-in computer allowed for minor contextual processing and expanded his field of vision to well behind his shoulder. He could've used combat mods on it but had decided against it. Military-grade augments were likely to attract more attention than they were worth.

Lorca watched Kodos as the other man calmly took a sip from the ale. He showed no sign that the taste bothered him.

"I'm sorry," Lorca said after a moment, sweeping his gaze over his companion. "I should've asked if you were up to it."

Kodos looked back at him evenly. Not for the first time, Lorca realised how strange it was to be sitting here with _this _man of all possible people and have any kind of conversation, much less a polite one.

After a moment, Kodos said, "You are always very polite. There's no issue, I knew what I did when I joined your crew."

Culber had accused him of excessive politeness at least twice before. Terrans did their level best to avoid admitting a mistake, they never apologised and meant it, the best they seemed capable of was grovelling supplication if they suspected they really had fucked up badly.

Kodos took another sip, then pulled a PADD from the travelling bag and put it at the table between them, ready for the next step while Lorca was still trying to find his balance from the last. The memories of Tarsus — the _real _Tarsus, the one at home — was at the tip of his tongue, persistent against his attempt to wash it away with the ale.

At home, he had never actually _met _Kodos, there had never been a moment when he needed to think of him anything other than a target he had to reach, prey he had to catch, or, as time passed, a nightmare haunting his past. Was this calmly methodical man, himself polite towards Lorca and what had to seem like irrational behaviour, a functional measure of _that other one_.

His ale was nearly half-empty on his darkening musings. Because looking back at that time, at his hunt for Kodos and the way he had to hold on to his very principles by his fingertips. It had taken years to come to terms with the fact that he had wished very much for Kodos to resist and fight back, give him a chance to kill him. But there was another truth hiding inside it, only relevant now that he was looking at the realisation from the vantage point of years past and the context of a very different universe. Sometimes, these days, he caught himself wondering why he would have needed a reason to kill Kodos _other _than what he had already done.

"Captain?" Kodos started, looked at Lorca expectantly. "Our next step should be to make contact with the dealer."

Lorca looked past Kodos at the people milling about the pub. A newsfeed was projected along a stretch of the wall above the bar.

"We have time, Mr Karidian," he said, using Kodos' assumed name. "Let's take in the atmosphere first, get a sense of the place. I haven't been planet-side in a while."

Indeed, he hadn't been down on a planet since they'd left Tarsus and that planet had very little in common with Yemuro. Lorca had expected an industrial hub like this to be a cesspool of misery, aliens and humans alike treated like livestock and work-slaves, some sort of instant punishment system in place to respond to all and any deviant behaviour.

After a while, Lorca said, "I didn't expect Yemuro to be like this."

Something stilled in Kodos' face as he realised Lorca had thrown him an opening line, though Kodos was still confused as to what to with it. So, to avoid an answer, Kodos took a glance around the room, looking for whatever specifics had prompted Lorca's words.

Eventually, Kodos settled on, "What did you expect?"

"Well, stricter segregation between the races."

"There is some of that," Kodos said. "Most aliens aren't completely free to move around."

"No one can go absolutely everywhere they want," Lorca said and took a sip off his ale as he considered how willing he was to let it apply to him. Again, Kodos seemed uncertain what to make of the remark. If he was honest with himself, it was a little amusing how confused Kodos was by Lorca's attempt to connect with him. Clearly, he hadn't expected Lorca to ever let go of his animosity towards him.

Lorca let himself be momentarily distracted when the newsfeed changed. However, it didn't report on the Defiant as Lorca had feared. The incident was either considered not important enough or — which was far more likely — the propaganda machinery controlling the news didn't think it was a good idea to report on an unknown, cloaked vessel appearing in orbit only to vanish again. At least it meant the Defiant had made her escape successfully, otherwise, there would have been some bragging.

"In my universe," Lorca started again. "We don't actually know what a romulan looks like."

He glanced back at the bar and studied the vulcan who'd served him earlier, wondering if maybe it had been a romulan, after all. That piece of information had briefly sucked the breath from him when he'd read it. Not only had the Terran Empire made contact with the romulans, they were also engaged in a long, protracted war of conquest, currently occupying roughly a quarter of what used to be space firmly in romulan hands. At home, people hadn't even known what a romulan looked like, much less had an inkling of their vulcan ancestry. The archives on the Defiant didn't have much information on the details of that split. Like all conquering nations, the terrans saw little reason to record or respect the cultures they subjugated. Still, the mere fact that the romulans were still holding their own was enough to pique the interest of military engineers as well as scientists and scholars, providing more than enough material to keep Lorca up for hours, devouring every morsel.

"We went to war with them, then made peace with them, all without ever seeing one," Lorca said. No wonder, too, their ability to pass off as vulcan would have made infiltrating their enemies a breeze. No one would ever see it coming. But then, the romulans had inadvertently kick-started what would become the Federation, whatever meddling they had done behind the scenes, it hadn't paid off the way they had hoped.

Unlike Tarsus, Yemuro had a substantial alien population. Lorca could identify at least half a dozen alien species interacting freely with each other, seemingly without any of their own ancestral hatreds. Having all been conquered by the terrans probably gave them all the commonality they needed. Nothing united better than a common enemy, Lorca thought. He took a sip of the ale, hoped the taste would burn down his throat and distract him, but it merely completed the bitterness.

"Captain, ten days isn't…" Kodos said.

"_Mr Basora_," Lorca corrected him. "I'm just your bodyguard, remember?"

A database search on both names had turned up nothing suspicious or unique. This universe's Jorge Basora had served on the Buran briefly and been killed in action long before _Lorca's _treachery had been known, perhaps long before he himself had known he wanted to be emperor.

Kodos looked slightly displeased with the reprimand but chose not to say anything. "Very well, I think ten days isn't such a long time. We shouldn't waste it."

"We should get settled in," Lorca said with as much patience as he could muster. Just because he was playing the subordinate didn't mean he was going to let Kodos take over wholesale. "If I have to fight, I want to know my surroundings."

Kodos frowned and cast a quick, assessing gaze around the pub, a look which encompassed the entirely planet and their situation. He was too polite to point out that, if Lorca had to fight, he would go down within minutes. Their only protection was anonymity.

After another moment of thought, Kodos loaded up a map of the immediate area onto the PADD between them.

"In that case, I suggest we find a place to stay," he said. "There is a hotel not far from here, it's fully automated, should I book rooms?"

"Wouldn't people be easier to game than a computer?"

He thought of the immediate alarm his DNA had raised by any actual scan of him.

"Maybe," Kodos conceded with the looks of a man who disagreed and didn't want to argue. "But I did my research, the hotel is located in a high-crime area, likely hosting criminals regularly, yet there's no indication any alarm has been raised from there in the past three years. I suspect either their scanners are non-functional or their network connections have been allowed to erode. Possibly both."

"Well," Lorca said. "Book the rooms then."

Moreau had provided contact details for a handful of people who dealt in dilithium crystals. As an essential component for warp engines, the empire liked to keep trade with them regulated to clamp down on the warp capabilities of enemies and rebels as well as independent starship captains, who it tended to label pirates regardless of their actual vocation. Not few of them, Lorca thought, would have been forced into piracy by that same draconian regulation. Dealing in dilithium, especially warp-grade, was a dangerous business and despite Moreau's information, Lorca wasn't sure the trade would go through without issue. He had no one to vouch for him, after all, and the face of a man most people, human and alien, either at least distrusted or outright hated.

"Maybe you're right," Lorca said and watched the surprise light up Kodos' face. "Let's not waste time."

#

Barely an hour later, Lorca leant against the narrow slit of a window in his hotel room. Kodos had used the hotel's automated check-in terminal for both of them, minimising the risk of Lorca getting anywhere too close to a scanner and raising hell this early in the game. Their rooms had a connecting door of plastic so thin it wasn't entirely opaque, so Lorca could see the glow from the holo-projection in front of Kodos, even if he couldn't make out any details. Though, for the moment the city street below held all his attention with its over-crowded bustling. Sometimes, a terran in uniform would push through them, leaving an open gap behind, a shark breaking through water, but for the short time Lorca was watching, he had to witness no scenes of needless violence or abuse. Perhaps this society had already worked through the necessity for either, subduing their enemies to the point where they fell from desperation into mere hopeless apathy.

The room's air filtration was bad, scratching in his throat as he took a deeper breath and turned away from the window and almost missed a step, misjudging his own body weight. It would be something to watch out for, though he'd very much prefer if he didn't get himself into a situation when it mattered. He knew he was mostly just posturing with his weapons and glaringly displayed attitude. On Tarsus, he'd had advantages to help bring him out on top, but here he only had one non-combatant at his side and no quick exit strategy. He'd have to watch his step in more than one way.

They weren't up high enough to give him much of a view of the skyline, but somewhere out there, the way home waited for him to take the first step. All he had to do now was reach out, he could almost always feel it. He knew he should pace himself. Take this one slowly, one carefully measured decision at a time.

He watched himself as he bunched his fist, chased the sensation of it down his arm and into his shoulder, trying to figure out what to do with the tension. Fuck that. Timidness never worked in this universe that much he knew for certain.

He walked through the connecting door to stand in front of Kodos' table, looking down at the man until Kodos looked up expectantly.

"Can I go into the vulcan quarter or are they closed at night?"

"Not to humans," Kodos said. "Or aliens who have legitimate business." He paused. "Or aliens without legitimate business but alternative means."

Lorca nodded, just what he expected — and hoped — and he stepped away to the cluster of his weapons and the coat to methodically put everything on.

"I'm going out," he said, realising only after he'd said it how having to communicate his intentions so was both necessary and irritating. And it he hadn't exactly given Kodos much information to work with.

As he made his way down to the street and into the only slightly thinning evening crowd, Lorca thought he should have been honest with Kodos. Honest all the way through to the other side, where his memories of the Tarsus IV massacre lay buried. He'd need to remedy it soon.

The crowds didn't quite part for him the way they would for a uniformed terran, but they shifted enough to allow him passage without slowing him down much. After a little while, Lorca realised he was following the same pattern, watching out for people in uniform and making sure he wasn't directly in their path. And there were a lot of those, not just walking — patrolling — but also manning guard posts and street corners, close enough they could always see each other. The Terran Empire was a military dictatorship, after all, and here was the presence to prove it, in case Lorca had had any doubts. No one spared him much attention, which was good enough for him.

The scrubbing held its promise, however. The contextual display in his eyepatch warned him of the location of DNA sniffers, allowing him to avoid them if he wanted though he quickly learned that wasn't necessary. When the motion of the crowd pushed him close to one, nothing happened, either and when he arrived at the gate to the vulcan quarter, he walked through right next to one without the device giving any indication he bothered it at all.

The vulcan quarter was a container town, ugly and uniform, with not even a hint of typical vulcan architecture or sense of aesthetics. Stacks of dull, greyed plastics formed honeycombs of towers, allowing for narrow passageways between each, barely enough space for two people next to each other, except for the broad main-axis cutting through the area which would allow scooters or chariots to pass easily.

The deeper he went into the vulcan quarter, the fewer non-vulcans were about. People here walked with measured paces, a certain type of solemnity he had come to associate with vulcans, though in this context, he couldn't help but think of their posture as apathetic, a broken people shuffling around in their ghetto. Terran guard posts were still in place but seemed to be often automated. Lorca saw patrols only on the main thoroughfares.

He switched the display in his eyepatch and let the display direct him to Sennai's allotted housing. As he made his way into the neatly ordered, but still confusing maze of towers, the lights began to shift. From natural sunlight filtered through the smog-filled air to the brightness of artificial lights, dimmed to a terran's comfort level. Even he breathed just a little easier when the thin cover of darkness draped itself over him, primordial instincts giving him a false sense of security.

They were close to the planet's equator, making the transition pass quickly and by the time Lorca had found the right tower, no remnant sunlight reached him anymore. Each tower had a single vacuum lift and a rickety staircase allowing access to the upper floors.

Sennai's housing unit was located on the 49th floor. Musing on his fitness level, Lorca pushed his way into the lift alongside several vulcans, an andorian and two terrans. The lift crawled upwards, each needlessly elongated minute of its travel time grating on Lorca's composure. No one spoke and no one looked at each other in their shared, confined space, except for the two terrans who joked with each other. According to their conversation, they were maintenance workers, charged with fixing devices on the roof of the structure. One of the terrans made brief eye contact with Lorca and leered, assuming some disreputable reason for Lorca's presence in the building, but he didn't say anything.

Only in the upper floors did the passenger count begin to dwindle and Lorca used the chance to shuffle his way to the side of the lift cabin, putting his back to a wall finally, letting him relax slightly for the rest of the way. By the time the 49th floor came, Lorca had no problem getting to the door. He stepped out into a clean, but clearly old and worn hallway.

Lorca followed the directions in his eyepatch towards the outer edge, where Sennai's unit was located. It seemed, as a highly educated worker, she had been given the privilege of having actual outside windows, for whatever that actually was worth.

As he was getting closer, Lorca spotted a vulcan ahead of him, seemingly taking the same turns he did. She was tall, almost his own height, and slim, dressed in a jumpsuit. Her long, curly hair was tied back at the neck, dark, but heavily shot through with silver. Lorca picked up the pace slightly, comparing the vulcan ahead of him to Sennai's only picture. Seemed like fortune was on his side for once.

Sennai didn't seem to notice his stalking her, or else decided to ignore it until he made his intentions clear. It would make sense for an alien to avoid confronting any terran without a good reason and backup, even if that terran was notably not a member of the military. Or, for that matter, self-identifying as terran.

Sennai stopped at her door and unlocked it by swiping a metallic bracelet over the sensor. Lorca broke into a run as the door slid open. In the short time it took for him to collide with her, he caught himself thinking he was doing this all wrong.

Finally alerted to him, Sennai turned towards him but had no time to muster any defence.

Lorca snatched her by her shoulders and pushed her through the door and into her home. The door closed behind him and the lights inside went on automatically. Unlike the inhospitable public lighting, Sennai's housing was lit by soft, golden light, reminiscent of vulcan's desert sun at sunset.

By the time the door had closed, Sennai had gathered her wits, twisted free of his loose grip and swung around. The padding on his coat blocked her attempt at a neck pinch. Realising it wasn't working, she punched her other hand at his face. He blocked, felt the impact on his arm like a metal bar and Sennai didn't let up.

The fight was short and could have been shorter if Lorca had wanted to truly harm his opponent. Sennai had had been trained in martial arts, but she hadn't been in a fight in a long while, rendering her technique slow and sloppy with not nearly enough precision behind it to incapacitate him.

"Stop," he hissed, caught her wrist as she tried a blow, held fast and threw her away from him to gain a little room for them both. "I only want to talk!"

She drew back from him, eyeing him warily, arms still raised defensively.

"You attacked me in my home," she countered. She drew back another step, then slightly to the side. Even as she spoke, quite calmly, she lunged for a dresser next to her, retrieving a phaser.

Lorca had seen the manoeuvre coming and jumped her, catching her wrist and smashing into to the top of the dresser. He locked his leg with hers and toppled her, winding the phaser from her, he stashed in his belt for now and retreated back towards the door, letting her regain her feet.

"I don't want a public spectacle," he said, strained calm as his breathing evened out. "Just listen for five minutes."

Her frown was intense, schooled vulcan features betraying no emotions, but the clear calculation of her next move, her chances if she attacked him, her best guesses as to his presence. He hadn't given her enough material to make any kind of logical decision, except for what she was doing: waiting and staying alert.

"I know that was bad form, I'm sorry," he said, fighting down the rush of adrenaline to appear calmer than he really was. This vulcan was not only his best shot at going home, she was his _only _shot. And he was doing his level best to waste it.

"I need your help," he said sincerely. "And I'm desperate."

Predictably, the vulcan's face gave nothing away.

"Five minutes," she reminded him sternly. "Security response is slow, but you have no right to be here against my will and there are ways to have you removed."

He wasn't convinced her threat had much to back it up, but he wasn't going to call her bluff when he needed her goodwill. He nodded his acceptance of her terms and was glad he was talking to a vulcan and the luxury of simply stating what he needed outright.

"You used to work with an astromycologist called Straal," he said, making it very much not a question. "You helped develop a displacement-activated spore hub drive. You need to build me one."

Sennai arched an eyebrow in a subtle show of confusion. "You got the wrong person," she said. "I don't know what you're talking about. You should leave."

"Are you going to waste my five minutes on playing dumb?" Lorca said, swallowing down his anger before it had a chance to manifest.

"What you are talking about," she said. "It sounds highly classified. Even if I were allowed to know anything about such a subject, admitting to and talking about it would be a death sentence."

"I'm not testing your loyalty to the Empire here," he said. He took a step to the side and leaned his shoulder into the wall, suddenly needing the support. He shook his head. "I'm so sorry, I'm doing this backwards. You've got no reason to trust me and every reason to distrust me. Look, I'm going to tell you the whole story, but I'll need more than five minutes."

Her gaze tracked over him, assessing him. Her posture didn't change and there was still tense caution lingering in her. He had no doubts she would have long since attacked him again if she thought she stood a chance.

"There are better ways to prove your honesty to me," she said.

He instantly knew what she was getting at. "No," he said, shuddering inwardly at the prospect of it. The vulcans of this universe had learned to weaponise their telepathic abilities. She could easily shred his mind to pieces if she wanted to, tear his thoughts inside out and leave him broken on her floor for security to clean him up once they actually got around to it.

"Not yet," he said. "Distrust goes both ways."

She took a moment longer to answer, making him suspect her offer really had been meant as an attack, not a genuine desire to know his motives.

"Very well," she said. "Talk."

They remained standing in her hallway, uncomfortable as if the fight hadn't concluded only paused, her phaser still in his possession. She didn't move a muscle while he talked, didn't relax, didn't even cock an eyebrow to give him even a hint of her thoughts.

Lorca, talking, felt like he was leaning a dent into her wall, gaze skittering around the room, looking for something else to hold on to. He didn't care at that moment whether it made him look pathetic as long as she understood he was telling her the truth, mostly unabridged, because every fibre of his being needed her to believe him and commit to his cause no matter how disastrous it would make her future.

* * *

The computer had snitched on Ferasini and revealed her location to be in the mess hall so Culber made his way there, soaking in the atmosphere on the ship on the way. So far, the small ripples created by Lorca's absence were barely noticeable. There had been a slight increase in emergency response requests, all of which due to an argument becoming physical — not that anyone admitted to it, usually people had had a freak accident, keeping their mouth shut towards a superior, like any crewmen with good sense. People understood quickly that Tyler was, at his heart, a terran-trained officer with a leadership style to match. Tyler tolerated violence much better than Lorca but was less likely to accept even the hint of insubordination and the crew behaved accordingly.

At the very least, it was interesting to observe how quickly the effect Lorca had had on his crew began to fade. Interesting, for sure, but also disquieting on a whole different level.

As if to compound his musings, Culber walked right into an altercation in the mess hall. A tangle of five people was at it, three of them in security uniforms, apparently trying to break it up while enjoying getting the chance to get an additional punch in.

The few people who were in the mess hall at the time had craned their necks to watch, keeping a safe distance away from the scuffle and otherwise enjoying the spectacle.

The security officers finally pulled the two crewmen apart and slapped cuffs on their wrists to deter them from trying to do anything else. Now that they were holding still, Culber had the chance to recognise Lieutenant Zhang as one of them, a visibly broken nose spilling a constant flow of blood down his face. The female lieutenant, Rubau, had a split eyebrow and lip. The security officer in charge snapped at the two of them, telling they get put in isolation until they calmed down. Neither of them asked for medical assistance, too busy glaring at each other to do so. They were marched past Culber and out the door.

A cleaning bot scurried from its home in the wall and began cleaning up the spilt blood and spittle from their fight. The spectacle over, the audience returned to what they had been doing before.

Culber finally spotted Ferasini at a table to the back of the room, seated so she could observe the entirety of the mess hall and herself remain undisturbed. Not that anyone would have dared bother her anyway. On Tarsus, people had treated Ferasini with wary respect, rarely approaching her uninvited, merely admiring her from afar and hoping she would deign to notice them. She had commanded that respect merely by merit of her personality and ability. Here, among military-trained terran personnel, her status was unspoken, but untouchable, her expertise and knowledge mostly worthless. The crew perceived her as belonging to Lorca, the Captain's Woman. Ferasini probably hated it but didn't show it openly. It also was unlikely to truly scratch her confidence and she knew how to play her cards as they were dealt to her. Besides, at least Culber knew that her and Lorca's relationship was far more complicated than that, their power imbalance was tidal, leaving neither of them in control for very long.

She had a bowl of nuts in front of her, a large cup of steaming hot chocolate and a PADD. She was idly nibbling on a nut, watching the cleaning bot do its duty, only acknowledging Culber with a flick of her gaze over him, then back to the scene. She wasn't the type who would pick this sort of place to work, needing the background noise and influx of minor distractions to help her concentrate. It was far more likely she was here to observe, soak in the atmosphere the same way Culber had done. It was amusing to think they were still on the same page in many ways, no matter what else had changed.

"Lieutenant Zhang and Lieutenant Rubau fought over Lorca," she said as Culber sat down opposite her. She shuffled a little to the side along the bench so he didn't block her view completely.

"And he isn't even here," Culber said.

She finished her nut and looked at Culber with a slow frown. "You understand that that's the problem, right?"

"It's been barely a day," Culber said. "They are smarter than that. The captain comes back and they act like that, he'll be terrifying."

Ferasini snorted, unimpressed by his assessment.

"They know something big is happening," Ferasini said, picked up her cup, but pointed one finger past Culber. "Zhang was meeting Alibali."

Culber looked around and spotted Alibali by the replicators. He had seen her before, holding a tray in hand and standing back, looking like she was waiting for the fight to end, so she could walk to a table without the tray getting knocked out of her hand. Now, turning he was just in time to see her put the tray down and leave the mess hall.

"Budding romance or platonic friendship," Culber said with a lopsided grin. "Either way, cute."

"No, risky," Ferasini said. "Because Alibali's pillow talk can ruin us all."

Culber looked back at her, studying her face. The red line across it and the dry, flaky skin framing it. He remembered why he had originally sought her out. "You should let me treat your face."

At least now he had her full attention, even if it was impatience mixed with anger. "I don't care, it's not important."

Culber sighed, gave her benevolent smile and said, "I could get you to do it with one sentence, you know."

She arched a doubtful eyebrow at him. Some movement behind him momentarily tracked her gaze over his shoulder, then back. Her mood was dark and frosty.

"It's just the beginning," she said, not taking the bait he had thrown her. He thought of making her swallow it anyway, but decided to hear her out first.

"The beginning of what?" he asked.

"Lorca is leaving us behind," she said, pulled one corner of her mouth into a bitter little smirk. "He's leaving us _again, _after a fashion, even if they aren't the same captains. It feels the same to them, I think."

"Hmm," Culber made, stapled his fingers and settled his chin into them. "What do you know about what the Captain's doing on Yemuro?"

"He's looking for a way home."

"That's hardly a secret," Culber pointed out, even if the nagging memory of Moreau's message called him a liar at the back of his head. "We've been jumping at every whisper for months."

"He's found a way," Ferasini said. "And he's trying to keep it from the crew because it'd tear us apart. You should have a plan B ready for when this ship sinks."

"Why should I?" Culber chuckled. "Do you?"

Ferasini tilted her had back, looking down at Culber along her nose, all arrogant confidence and scornful exasperation. She raised her voice just a little. "He's not going to take anyone with him. He'll leave us here, leaderless and unprotected. The Empire will hunt us relentlessly. Tyler cannot hold this crew together and he cannot keep us safe, either."

She frowned at him as he continued not to react. "You should be bothered," she added.

Culber wagged his head from side to side. "Well, I think it's a bit early to overreact. Switching universes is a difficult trick to pull off. Who knows if it'll ever work."

"The rumour of treason can be just as devastating as treason itself."

"Oh fuck," he chuckled. "Did you quote that from a Starfleet manual? Without any irony? Seriously?"

She shrugged, looked around the room, then back at him. "But it's true. Either we're being betrayed by our own captain, or it just looks like we are. What would you do? Err on the side of caution, I should think."

"So what's _your_ plan B?" he asked. "Betray us first?"

She picked up another nut, smiled a little as if contemplating it. "I have no such plans, but someone does, I bet. Just wait and see."

* * *

In the gloom of the ready room, Tyler was waiting patiently as the silence stretched on, lingering in the corners. In front of him, both Zhang and Rubau had stopped bleeding while their bruises were beginning to show, their limbs would be feeling the weight of them by now, the sore weakness eating away at their resolve. Both lieutenants kept their gazes fixed straight ahead, unflinching and showing no signs at their increasing level of discomfort.

What would Lorca do? Tyler asked himself.

Ever since Lorca had left, the number of altercations had spiked, as if that one man's single presence had been enough to subdue his entire crew. Lorca didn't tolerate violence, he had backed that statement time and again and channeled his crew's natural aggression into whoever happened to be his target. Tyler suspected some people thought they could advance themselves in Lorca's absence without suffering immediate repercussions and some of them would doubtless be stupid enough to think Lorca would let it stand upon his return.

Finally, Tyler said, "Well, nothing to say?"

Whatever disagreement they'd had in the mess hall, it didn't stop them from answering with a unified, "No sir!"

"That's the kind of teamwork I expect on the ship," Tyler remarked with caustic humour.

Zhang briefly shifted his gaze at Tyler, but was careful not to make accidental eye-contact and put himself on the spot.

"I think you two would benefit from some more experience in that department," Tyler said, made a sharp gesture at the security officers by the door.

"Put them both in the same cell, let's give them a chance to work their issues out. Some alone time will do you both good. Enjoy your leisure, it'll be double shifts after that."

As they were led away, Tyler wondered what the two of them would do with his punishment. They could use the chance to kill each other in that cell, which he knew he should hope they wouldn't. Perhaps they'd talk or fuck it out. He didn't much care as long as they pulled their weight again once they were out of the cell.

Belatedly, Tyler realised Lorca might have offered them medical assistance and once they inevitably refused, he would have forced it on them. A would be a clever trick, maintaining the image of the leader he was while making absolutely sure they understood who was making the decisions. The chance for it was done and Tyler decided it wouldn't hurt — wouldn't hurt _him, _anyway — if he maintained his own style of command.

After some more thought, Tyler sighed and pulled up the latest report from engineering. They had been able to achieve warp speed of up to three for shorter durations, enough to get themselves out of dodge and hide for further repairs. Bell never tired of assuring him they would be able to pick up Lorca in the ten days, regardless of where he went.

It wasn't good enough. They needed to be able to swoop back down over Yemuro and pick him up directly. That's what Tyler wanted from Bell and her team.

He put the report aside, swiped his thumb over his console and extended an invitation to Kriger to share lunch with him by shift's end.

* * *

_End of Chapter 3_

* * *

Reference: "This Alien Shore" is a book by C. S. Friedman, who I used to love, but have somehow grown out of.


	4. Downward Spiral

**Chapter 4: Downward Spiral**

* * *

Even as he spoke, Lorca realised he was still doing this all wrong. The emotion in his tale was raw, but it was so only to him. A show of emotion, no matter how sincere, was unlikely to sway Sennai either way. At best, she would simply ignore their display, at worst, she would conclude he was too mentally unstable to trust.

He pushed himself from the wall he'd been leaning into, telling himself it had been a childish moment of weakness to even use it as support in the first place. For a brief moment, he was glad Sennai was the only one who had been witness to it.

As he continued to speak, he picked his words carefully, voice levelled to leech it of the underlying feelings the memories roused. He laid it all out to Sennai in a way he hoped would make it easier for her to accept his proposal. Though even without any sign showing on her face, his gut feeling told him he wasn't making much headway.

The truth was, Sennai was utterly terrified. Had to be, all things considered. She was a member of a slave race. For a time, she had been allowed to live and work in a place which would have been seen as above her station by herself as well as everyone she came into contact with. Even if the scientist Straal had valued her input, it was the value given to property_. _And having overreached, she had been left scrambling for safety in the anonymity of a cancerous hive within Yemuro's never-ending sprawl of factories and refineries. Most telling of all, however, was that she had sought out this place. With her skill-set and knowledge, she could have easily found a place among the rebellion, she could have made a difference, perhaps even a decisive one and she had chosen not to.

If the offer of helping to save her entire species from subjugation hadn't got her to leave her hiding spot, he had nothing to offer that would sway her.

He didn't let these thoughts detract him too much. He still had to try. So he told her in measured words of his universe and his vulcan CMO, his deltan first officer and all the other aliens of his crew, each an equal to the other, pretending the nauseating sense of heartbreak didn't threaten to close his throat down.

He told her about his imprisonment and Tarsus, how he had made himself captain of the Defiant, it was no small feat, surely. It had impressed even Landry, enough to make an ill-thought-out and poorly timed attempt at his life. _I can protect you, _was what he was saying, putting it in front of her as the only logical conclusion to be drawn. He didn't spell that out to her, no point in accidentally insulting her.

"So," he finished, arched his brows at her, challenging her perception. "I just want to go home. You worked on the spores, you know it's possible."

Sennai didn't immediately respond, when she did, her voice held little inflexion. "Yes, it's possible," she said, but it was barely more than an acknowledgement of his statement.

"So it must be possible for me to get back."

A little animation appeared on her face even if it didn't quite make it to an actual show of amusement. "I doubt you understand the scope of what you are asking."

"Trust me, I do," he said, for a moment feeling the weight of all the time he had already spent in this damned place pressing against him.

She made a noise in her throat and said, "That's not what I meant. But the spore drive, as you refer to it, it took years of research just to have a working concept. You don't know how many prototypes we discarded because they wouldn't work. And we had the resources of the Emperor herself to support us for much of that time."

She tilted her head in challenge, "You have one ship, it's not enough."

"But you won't have to start from scratch, you already did it."

"It's an advantage, that's true. But I don't have access to our old research results, or the materials or even the generator blueprints. That's not to mention the finished engines. You don't even have any spores, do you?"

It was true, but it didn't matter. He took a slow step towards her and spread his arms out, he smiled a little, reminding himself that the rules of this universe didn't apply to him and he was a pirate now. There was nothing out there in space which he couldn't just take.

"Whatever you need, I'll get it for you," he said. "Besides, you have most of that knowledge saved up in your head, you just need the tools."

"You want me to waste the rest of my life on a foolish pursuit," she said. She had edged back a scant few centimetres as he'd stood up, but he wasn't entirely sure if she felt threatened by him or not.

"Well," he gave a mannered shrug. "You're wasting away here, too. When I go home, you could come along. Be a scientist there, where you'll be fully accepted."

She did not outright reject his proposal or dismiss the idea, which might be a win, but he could tell thought the idea even more foolish, no matter how appealing it might be to her. Indeed, her expression softened ever so slightly, "I'd like to see it," she said. "Truly. But the chances of success are minuscule. I cannot help you."

"Well, without your help, it does look pretty bad," Lorca agreed. Perhaps there had been more scathing distaste in his voice than he had meant to put there or maybe it simply didn't require an inherent understanding of emotions for Sennai to respond the way she did.

She said, "I know your situation is desperate. If you'd take my advice, let it go. There is no way back to your universe from here. You should make the best of it, let this be your home."

He pressed the tip of his tongue to the back of his teeth to keep the venom in. _Home_ meant a place where he could let his guard down. _Home _meant a place of safety and dignity.

He merely shook his head in answer, unable to lie to her face and take her advice seriously.

After a moment, he said, "There's another problem."

Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly as her mind processed his implication. She said, "You're worried about secrecy."

He had set himself up for it by his rash actions, of course, but it changed nothing.

"I'm worried about secrecy," he agreed.

For a split second, her expression looked like it was about to break into a smile and it was her turn to shake her head.

"I have nothing to gain by revealing your offer to my superiors," Sennai said. "They do not themselves know about my past work and have no clearance to. All I ask is that you leave my life and we pretend this conversation has never happened."

It rang true enough, at least for the short time he was going to let her have the run of it. He nodded, turned as if to go, then stopped himself to give her a long look.

"Still," he started and told her the communicator frequency. "If you change your mind, I'll be on Yemuro for a few more days. Call."

She said nothing to his last-ditch attempt to sway her but didn't repeat her rejection either. To her, it would seem superfluous to say it again.

In the short time it took for Lorca to turn towards the door, he contemplated abducting her right there and then. He could simply overpower her, tie her up and drag her back to the hotel with him. He doubted a terran patrol would do much more than show mild curiosity at his behaviour. Once he got her on the Defiant, she would come around, logic alone would convince her to make the best of her predicament.

In truth, of course, the logistics of abducting her were not quite as simple. He swallowed his anger down, felt it like bile in his throat and showed nothing of it while she could still see it.

Once back outside in the cold twilight glow of the hallway, he stopped. He listened to the audible click of the cheap locking mechanism as Sennai made sure he couldn't ambush her again in her own home. He had rattled, but probably not enough to make her throw her lot in with his.

Come to think of it, no one around here had ever freely chosen to follow him, he had _made _them, by tearing their world apart around them. In darker moments, it seemed only fair, because it was exactly what had been done to him.

He sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth before he kicked himself back into motion, focussed on the sickly coiling anger in his throat and let it carry him down and out into the street. Turning the conversation over in his head only fuelled his anger. Some of it directed at Sennai and her cowardice, but most of it aimed at himself and his ill-advised actions. The only consolation he found, if it counted at all, was that she likely would have rejected a more diplomatic approach just the same.

He thought about calling Kodos, but he didn't have anything important to share. Certainly not how this part of his plan had spectacularly failed to yield the desired results and how he hoped the other part ended more favourably. No spore drive scientist was one issue to deal with, no dilithium was a wholly different and far more immediate concern.

What crowds there had been earlier had thinned to just the occasional vulcan here and there, making the few terran patrols stand out like a sore thumb and thus easy to avoid. Lorca had technically no reason to avoid them, but with military, he preferred not to get to close, because there was always the issue of recognition. Tyler had told him how widespread the hunt for _Lorca _had been after his treason was revealed, it was unlikely there was a soldier anywhere in the galaxy who wouldn't know him by sight. Especially because _Lorca _hadn't been declared dead alongside everybody else on the Charon. He was itching for a fight and taking it out on a terran was just the kind of pointless outlet he wanted, but the risk was too great to take.

While the patrols didn't bother him, at some point, he had picked up a tail. It had to be vulcans and at first, he had dismissed it, but the pattern continued and developed sharp edges. Vulcans, at least four of them, maybe more, were shadowing him, dipping in and out of side-streets, smoothly coordinated with each other so he was always in sight of at least one of them.

Sennai had certainly not wasted any time ratting him out. Such a clever little vulcan, he thought, sneering. Of course, she hadn't told her superiors, her reasoning was perfectly sound, but he should have known that vulcans could be narrow-mindedly literal if it suited them. Left the question of what these people wanted. Make sure he left? Intimidate him so he didn't come back?

Take him out for good?

He took a turn away from a terran patrol heading straight at him and into a street leading between two housing towers and followed the narrow street along the outside of the tower. Once he was out of sight from the main street and the passing patrol, he stopped.

He stepped so his back faced the wall and surveyed the branching off junctions between other housing towers, waiting for movement. He casually tucked his hands into the pockets of his overcoat, sliding his fingers around the hilt of a switchblade before he settled one foot back against the wall. A fight without consequences was just what he needed to clear his head.

He didn't have to wait long. Vulcans sauntered into view from every direction, advancing on him like a pack of hunting coyotes, five of them he could see, blocking off all escape routes. Which was fine by him, he wasn't planning to run away.

The vulcans were young, adolescents, dressed in an unfashionable assortment of common terran clothes and traditional vulcan robes, refined with clearly scavenged pieces of damaged combat armour.

"You are clearly lost," one of them said, untempered youthful arrogance coupled with natural vulcan poise. All of it bravado, but it would almost be a heartwarming moment to see an unbroken spirit challenging a terran like this. Lorca would have enjoyed it more if he hadn't been on the receiving end of it.

"We could show you the way," another young vulcan offered, sliding closer by one step, gloved fingers flexing by her side in preparation.

"I'll find my own way," Lorca said. He was a good step away from the wall now, far enough to allow for freedom of movement without exposing his back. He slid the handle of the switchblade into the palm of his hand. "Just move aside."

He didn't expect them to. Enamoured with their own composure, these young vulcans didn't indulge in mocking laughter or meaningful glances at each other, but their body language was unmistakable.

"No," the first vulcan said and Lorca pecked him as the ringleader of this little street-gang. "You'll need help finding _this _way."

"Terrans get lost so easily," a third one said, half-wedged in the shadows next to a neat stack of discarded furniture. Lorca only glanced at him from the corner of his eyes, memorising his position.

"We always like to help," the ringleader said, allowing himself a faint sneer. He pranced forward another step, fast enough to tease an attack, when it was just a feint to make Lorca twitch the wrong way.

The attack came, instead, from the female vulcan who had spoken second, lunging low and forward. Over her hand, the four-pronged spikes of a _wun-sehlat — _a pair of spiked, vulcan brass knuckles — caught the light just so. Lorca saw her coming, though perhaps underestimated her speed enough to let the tips get caught in the width of his sleeves as he drew his hand free. With his fingers wrapped around the handle of the switchblade, he punched her into the side of her face, then, releasing the blade, he snapped his hand back to hit the vulcan coming at him from the shadows. The blade punctured his cheek.

The female had collided with the wall, lost the balance of her attack, but came back. The wun-sehlat sliced smoothly, but uselessly through the wide sleeve of his coat, unable to connect with flesh while he kept moving.

Unlike Sennai, these vulcans were younger and faster, but also unlike her, they had never been properly trained. What they had was merely a basic understanding of the concept behind most vulcan combat styles, but they were executed viciously, but sloppily and broke itself against Lorca's experience.

He took the time to bash one of their heads into the wall until the wiry body went limp in his hand, then twisted just in time for their wun-sehlat to graze over his neck, barely deflected by the reinforced edge of his collar. The vulcan got his elbow in the face for his trouble. Lorca threw himself around, his blade caught the edge of a badly-fitting armour-piece and sliced alongside it until it found soft tissue to bury into to spill bright green blood over his fingers. The vulcan gave a strangled hiss of pain, stumbling back and holding his side.

The ringleader held his own the longest, holding back to let his companions test out Lorca's abilities. The young vulcan sneered and jumped, twisted in the air as Lorca moved to adapt. The vulcan's boot hit his wrist and knocked the switchblade from his grip. Lorca followed the move downward and used the motion to slide another from his other pocket. He levered himself back up, released the blade and would have cut the vulcan's side wide open. The vulcan made a snarling sound, twisted to the side and stepped a boot into Lorca's leg, making him buckle.

It had been almost a game to him, the assurance of his skill habitual as it had grown these past few months and something icy spiked through his mind as his knee hit the pavement, hard enough to jar back up along his spine. Stupid to forget. Stupid to think this was a game. Stupid not to finish this right when it had started.

He snapped the phaser from its holster and brought it, never bothering to aim before he fired and the energy beam cut bright and sharp up inside the vulcan's thigh, shearing into his hip and almost severing his arm. Whatever amateurish discipline had carried the vulcan this far, it failed him, dragged a high-pitched scream from him and he toppled back.

Terran standard phasers didn't have a stun setting. The Defiant had the means to replicate the components to assemble one. Lorca had never got around to it.

He hissed and pulled himself up to his feet, took a step away from the wailing vulcan to check for the others.

The one with the bashed-in head was out cold, though probably too tough to die so easily. The other two, one with his face cut open and the female with the wun-sehlat edged away from him, looking between him and the two others, their expressions only displayed vague bewilderment in place of sheer panic. Still, their inner struggle was completely transparent, caught between the instinctual urge to flee and the desire to help their friends.

Before they could get any further, the choice was made for them.

The commotion had alerted one of the terran patrols and the two of them had arrived just in time to see the tail end of the fight. They had originally held back to watch, but when the show as over, they approached, casually stabbing a baton into each vulcans' back to make them crumple in pain to eye Lorca over the strewn, still wriggling bodies.

"Thought I heard trouble," one of the terrans said, then grinned at his fellow soldier. "But I could be mistaken."

"I was just showing them the way," Lorca replied casually and squared his shoulders under the coat. He made no attempt to holster the phaser but was keeping it aimed downward. He arched his brows over the vulcans, found his disdain and put it into his voice as he glanced them over. "Vulcans get lost so easily."

The two terrans laughed, but there was an edge to it which Lorca knew would transform into suspicion any moment.

Forestalling them, Lorca put on a lopsided, slightly awkward smile and said, "But… uh, I actually could use directions out of this shithole. Too many pointy ears around here, gives me the creeps."

He stilled his finger when he realised he was subconsciously stroking it over the trigger of the phaser.

Still, he seemed to have managed to deflect their instinctual distrust, earning him another laugh, although one at his expense. Chuckling, he joined in at their amusement and let them point him towards the exit gates of the quarters.

"Just for future reference," one of them said as he was already leaving. "We gotta investigate a phaser discharge. One hell of a hassle, you know. Puts everyone in a bad mood."

Lorca nodded graciously at the warning.

He didn't look back at the vulcans as he left, but his thoughts lingered. Had he just ran afoul of some street gang? Certainly, the living conditions in the vulcan quarter would foster the development of these even among a people like the vulcans. Or Sennai had betrayed him and wasted little time to do so. Without the terrans present, he could have stuck around and questioned the vulcans at phaser-point once they got back up. He considered doubling back, but that was asking for trouble from too many directions. The vulcans might be able to organise backup and come at him with more than he could easily handle. If the terrans had to interfere again_, _they weren't going to just let him walk away a second time.

As he approached the exit, he tucked the collar tight around his neck, where the wun-sehlat had nicked his skin. It didn't bleed, but he wasn't going to risk it having damaged the transparent seal Culber had put over the scratch marks. The day had been long enough without having to contend with his doppelganger's infamy.

* * *

Faint strain made itself known in his muscles by the time he arrived back at the hotel. Nothing severe, the vulcans hadn't been hitting him hard enough for that, but it still gave him a slightly perverse sense of relief to feel that sting throughout his body.

_Look at you, _he thought wryly, _enjoying the pain, going native. _It wasn't even pain, though, so it hardly counted.

He stepped into the lobby of the hotel. It was mostly empty and thoroughly inhospitable. Check-in terminals set facing the door and an uninviting row of benches with worn-out cushioning on the right. On the left, a set of bar tables accompanied a food replicator.

When Lorca stepped in, a young man glanced up from the replicator and gave him an assessing, but otherwise disinterested look before he turned back to the replicator, muttered something and then punched the side of the panel.

Lorca considered only for a moment. He had barely eaten anything since his arrival on Yemuro and while the food replicator was unlikely to produce anything even remotely tasty, he could get behind the concept of not eating for pleasure when necessary.

He stopped at a polite distance from the other man to wait his turn. The young man finally retrieved a noodle bowl from the slot and took it with him to the nearest table. Lorca caught a whiff of hot water and old garlic.

"Just you know," he said. "The fucker is a dirty liar. Whatever you want, it'll give you soggy noodles."

Lorca gave him a slight smile, "Thanks for the warning."

He tried ordering something else anyway, but as predicted the replicator produced another noodle bowl, identical to the one the young man was currently slurping from.

Sighing inwardly, Lorca picked it up. The bowl itself was made from some synthetic fibre, so thin his fingers left little dents in it and the bowl reshaped as he carried it. The only positive aspect of the entire meal was that it was hot.

"There used to be a proper restaurant just down the street," the young man said after a time. "Used to serve real food, all fresh and made on the spot."

"Used to?" Lorca asked, giving the young man a slightly longer look than before.

The young man shrugged. "Yeah, the owner got into an accident or something and the place closed up soon after. I don't really know the story. Pity, though."

The young man was lanky, blond with pale, freckled skin. He was dressed not dissimilar to Lorca himself, though with a tighter fitting coat and fewer visible weapons, which probably didn't count for much around these parts.

"Are there any other places like that?" Lorca asked. On second look, something was off with the young man's eyes. They had a distinctly yellow tint and the white was a dirtied grey. He looked human otherwise, so Lorca wasn't entirely sure if he was just suffering some odd condition or if he was an alien, or possibly only half-human.

"Fresh food is hard to come by around here, you need the right connections," the young man smiled, finished his noodles and wiped his mouth. "But there's a great bar now where that restaurant used to be. Not so big on the food, but the drinks make up for it and the music's good."

His strange eyes brushed over Lorca's face and he added, "Why don't you join me tonight? Grab a drink, have some fun? I'm Emm, by the way."

"I'm not looking for fun."

"Doesn't mean you can't have some," the young man smiled.

When Lorca just met his gaze levelly, the smile faded somewhat and Emm shrugged. "Oh well, your loss. You change your mind, I won't be far."

With a final smile he turned away and headed for the elevator.

Lorca watched him go, then stared back down at his food and decided he'd had enough of it.

He knew from experience the elevator was agonisingly slow, so he passed it by and took the stairs. It was only the fifth floor, something far more doable than Sennai's tower.

As he stepped past the elevator door on his floor, he heard it rattle, then open. He glanced over his shoulder to see the young man exit and step into the corridor behind him. They walked a few steps before Lorca glanced over his shoulder again, frowning.

The young man threw up his hands, "Hey, I'm not following you, my room's just that way."

Lorca took one more step to get past a doorway, then stopped and put his back to the wall.

"After you, then," he said.

Emm rolled his eyes. "Suspicious fuck," he muttered as he passed Lorca by.

"What was that?"

The young man stopped, just past Lorca, squared his shoulders and dropped his head back rather than look around. "You," he said. "I mean, all I wanted was a good time." He shrugged. "Could be true, couldn't it?"

The shift in tone was blatantly obvious, immediately changing the nature of the exchange in the span of a handful of seconds. Lorca tensed, immediately closing his hand around the switchblade in his coat, but before he could pull it out, the young man had twisted around and fired the phaser held close to his chest.

The beam washed over Lorca, he was immediately braced for agony, but instead, his limbs just turned to rubber and he collapsed in an inelegant heap. His knee, shoulder and the side of his head his the ground as he went down, but there was no pain. He was completely paralysed, yet his breathing and heartbeat seemed unhindered, so he guessed the workings of his inner organs were untouched by the blast. It was certainly not Starfleet issue phaser. His consciousness stuttered, but it seemed more caused by a lack of feedback from his body than from the stun beam itself. His eyelids ad drooped closed and he couldn't open them and even his hearing was suppressed and distant.

"Well, shit," the young man hissed. Footsteps could be heard running the length of the corridor. "Zralisss! Come help me! Fucker's too heavy for me."

A door opened and a second pair of footsteps returned. Lorca tried to blink, but he couldn't get his eyes to open. He didn't feel the grip on his arm, only had a vague sense of being moved effortlessly and carried away.

"I love hotel rooms like this," the young man's voice said. Lorca was dropped and his senses couldn't quite make sense of it, but he seemed to be lying on his back. Metal hissed close to his head, but he couldn't identify the source.

"Lock the door," Emm said. He breathed a sigh of relief, presumably when the order was followed.

"What did you do?"

Kodos. Lorca snarled inwardly when he recognised his voice and the calm, submissive tone. Betrayal or just stupidity? What had _he _done? The surge of anger at the thought broke itself on the paralysation.

"Knocked him out," this was a new voice, deep, but distinctively female. "He'll come around in a few minutes."

The voice moved closer to Lorca as she spoke until she seemed to be standing right next to him.

"You know," she said. "I did wonder why he would keep his face, it's an obvious liability."

Lorca's skin tingled when it was touched and his head turned to the side so the left side of his face, the one without the eyepatch, was visible. He tried to strain the muscles in his neck to resist, but it made no difference.

"But, I think, I'd keep it, too."

Somewhere else in the room, a chittering growl could be heard which even the universal translator managed to translate into laughter only after a short delay. The female chuckled and moved away.

"Mr… Karidian," she said, intonation full of sarcasm. "How long do you intend to keep up the farce?"

"I told you the truth, it's just a case of mistaken identity," Kodos said. "I'm a free agent. I have been hired to buy dilithium crystals for an independent spaceship. Mr Basora is my bodyguard. He's not who you think he is."

So just run of the mill stupidity, Lorca concluded, unless Kodos was lying for Lorca's benefit, which seemed unlikely since he probably wouldn't know how the stun blast worked. The tingling in his skin spread out to his limbs slowly and intensified until it was a maddening itch he couldn't alleviate.

The female made a noise in her throat, full of complete disbelief. "Oh well, we'll just wait, then."

Lorca tried to relax — a mental state rather than a physical one, currently — and wait it out. He wouldn't have minded if the occupants of the room had kept talking. He was especially interested in how Kodos would conduct himself in his role. Lorca suspected the people who had attacked them were part of the underground network, dealing in dilithium. How they already knew of their presence on the planet was a different question. Maybe Kodos had made inquiries, despite Lorca's explicit order, and he had fumbled it. This entire mission on Yemuro was shaping up spectacularly. He should have paid more attention to Tyler's rescue planning and not dismissed it as unnecessary.

Time-keeping was impossible for Lorca, but at the roughest possible guess, he doubted he'd been lying there for more than ten or so minutes. Strangely enough, the tingling of actual sensation started in his chest, danced tickling along his collarbone and into his shoulder, up along his arm before it started to spread like warmth down the side of his torso and into his legs.

Experimentally, he tried to turn his head and while it felt too heavy to, he did move it. Opening his eyes took effort. He blinked the eye-patch back on, though it functioned as nothing more than a window to his surroundings. The phaser must have scrambled its system.

He was lying on a bed, tied spread-eagled in chain resting tight, but softly on his skin. He figured the hotel catered to all sorts and manacles could come in handy in more than one situation.

He'd been pulled free of his overcoat and as far as he could tell, he'd been stripped of all weapons.

"Finally," the female voice said. "I was beginning to think you were faking it."

Lorca wiped his mouth against his shoulder and raised his head to get a slightly better look of the room.

The eye-catcher, no doubt, was a towering reptilian alien, standing quietly threatening behind Kodos, who was seated at the table, his PADD and communicator pointedly just out of reach. The alien was dressed in a simple jumpsuit, green scales with iridescent black patterns. Even though the snout was closed, the slight outlines of teeth could be seen the length of it. Lorca didn't recognise the species at all and he was quite sure he would have remembered one of that description.

Facing Kodos across the table, the female had turned in her chair as Lorca began to move and regarded him with sparkling yellow eyes. She had the facial features of a strikingly beautiful woman; dark-skinned, with a long-limbed athletic body.

"Phaser — discharge," Lorca said, finding his tongue thick and ungainly in his mouth, slurring the words.

The female chuckled. "This one doesn't set off any alarms," she said. "Don't worry."

That was one concern dealt with, Lorca dropped his head back into the pillow.

"Untie me," he said.

The female got to her feet and stalked to his bedside, leaning in over him. In place of hair, she had feathers, one of the long strands fell over her shoulder as she leaned in.

"I wanted some fun," she said, baring white teeth with pointed canines.

"I want dilithium crystals."

Lorca tilted his head against the pillow, frowned when it clicked through his mind. "You're a chameloid."

Emm snorted and pulled away from him. She looked over at the reptilian, considering.

"How about we talk?" Lorca offered when her thoughts didn't seem to be going anywhere. "This is unnecessary, you have nothing to fear from me."

"Well," she said doubtfully, "That entirely depends on which story you plan to tell. Your partner, he insists your not Gabriel Lorca, but everyone knows that's a lie. And as long as there's lies, there's something to fear."

"It's not a lie, it's just complicated," Lorca said with a sigh. He pulled a little on his restraints. They were not meant to hold someone captive who didn't enjoy it. He suspected he could get out of the binds eventually. "This is annoying me," he added.

Emm chuckled, but the levity didn't last. She nodded at the reptilian, then pointed her phaser at Lorca. Without taking her eyes off him, she groped for the release button. The binds on his hands and feet opened and withdrew into the frame of the bed.

He sat up slowly, as unthreatening as he could possibly do it. She stepped back from him to give him space and he swung his legs around and to the floor, he remained sitting at the edge of the bed.

"Now explain to me how you're not Gabriel Lorca," she challenged.

"Easy, I'm a clone," he said. "The emperor liked to keep us around for entertainment. Executions, sex, torture, sometimes all three at the same time, for special occasions. Some of us escaped in the chaos, stole a shuttle and survived while the Charon blew up."

"I don't believe you."

He shook his head a little, laughing to himself.

"Well, _actually_," he said. "I _am _Gabriel Lorca, but I'm from a parallel universe, your Lorca and I switched places and all I want is to go home."

If she had been looking at Kodos instead of focussing on Lorca, she might have believed him. Instead, she only snorted a laugh. "I'm not nearly drunk enough."

He joined her laughter and for a moment, they almost appeared to be on the same level. Lorca broke the moment, as the humour drained from his expression and he changed his posture, causing a ripple in her, raising the phaser slightly.

"All right, you got me," he said, low voiced, still full of wry humour. "I underestimated the emperor, but let's call it a mutual mistake or we wouldn't have that _machine _on the throne. But it's not over, I'm coming for her, but I'm not going to repeat my errors. So yeah, you got me on the back-foot here and I need your help."

He slid to his feet smoothly, glad his paralysed muscled had recovered enough to let him do it. It gave him the chance to observe the dynamic between the two aliens. Despite the phaser, Emm back a step, nearly backing into the chair she had vacated earlier, while the reptilian took two very swift steps forward, bring them level with the chameloid, able to intercept an attack by Lorca should he attempt any.

Lorca ignored them, kept his gaze resting on Emm.

"I'll remember my friends," he said, just a little milder. "I don't care what breed they are."

She bared her teeth, the flare of anger in her gaze painting the insults in her mind, "You're full of shit."

According to the reptilian's posture, Lorca was expected to retaliate and perhaps, his counterpart would have. But Lorca waved dismissively with one hand, the gesture slow enough not to trigger any reflex.

"Rhetoric," Lorca said. "Is just rhetoric."

"You," she said through the barrier of her teeth. "Are. Full. Of. _Bull. _Shit."

Lorca laughed, shaking his head to himself. "I don't need you to believe me. I need you to give me the dilithium and I need a way off of Yemuro to rendezvous with my ship. That's all. You have nothing to lose by looking at what we have to offer in exchange."

"I have everything to lose," Emm countered, sounding offended. "There's not one person in this entire galaxy who has not suffered because of you. If I make any kind of deal with you, my career is over. My _life_ is over. You have nothing to offer."

Lorca wished he could tell her just how much he shared these exact feelings for the man she was talking about, but it wasn't what would sway this situation in his favour. She wasn't ready to believe or trust him, so fear would have to do.

He took a careful, slow step forward, just enough to bring himself into lunging distance before the reptilian and Emm had a chance to react. He jumped, knocked the phaser from her hand and caught it with his other. He threw himself around, phaser extended and it collided hard with the unyielding body of the reptilian as they advanced.

Lorca fired the phaser right into their chest, realised the weapon didn't discharge continuously and kept hitting the trigger. It had taken one blast to down Lorca earlier, but a handful of them had only managed to make the reptilian stop. Several more finally made them collapse in a heap, though still able to move.

He stepped to the side, bringing some distance between them. He looked up to see Kodos, for once, hadn't been entirely useless. He had jumped to his feet the moment Lorca had moved, the dropped chair prove of his speed. He'd rounded the table and come at Emm from behind, pressing a small knife to her neck.

Lorca gave Kodos a nod and he withdrew, circled back around the table until he reached the reptilian. He sheathed his knife and bent down to grip one of the reptilian's massive arms, hauled it back to the bed and shackled it to the foot of it. No doubt, the reptilian would be able to simply rip it off once they got back around.

Lorca advanced on Emm slowly and she took a step back from him, visibly rattled.

"How about we start again from the beginning?" Lorca said quietly. He picked up the chair and set it back against the table. When she didn't move, he added, "Sit."

Blinking between him and the chair and her downed companion, she still hesitated, looking for an out he knew he couldn't let her have. This day had gone south in too many ways already, he was in no mood to let it go any further.

He scowled and she must have conculuded it would be unwise to make him repeat his order. She carefully stepped forward and sat down by the table. He gave her some space as he retreated towards the other end of the room and made eye-contact with Kodos. They were not done, either, but what Kodos had done to bring this one, it would have to be dealt with later. Lorca nodded at the table and Kodos took the pointer, taking his place and retrieving his PADD.

"Make the deal, hash out the details," Lorca said, holstering Emm's phaser and crossing his arms over his chest.

Emm looked at him blankly, the sparks of playfulness and anger dimmed in her alien eyes. For a moment, Lorca was surprised how difficult it was to stand under that look, knowing the centuries of blood-trenched history it had taken to bring it on.

He met her gaze steadily and said, "I bet you'll end up liking it. They all do."

* * *

_End of Chapter 4: Downward Spiral_


	5. A Vision of Judgement

**Chapter 5: A Vision of Judgement**

* * *

Power, Lorca thought idly, was a heady thing. The longer Kodos and Emm talked, the more of the sparkle returned to her demeanour. She gestured more, even smiled a little, but all Lorca had to do was _move _in his guarding position by the door. The first time, he hadn't quite realised he was doing it, but he had started pacing slowly in the small space in front of the door, more to keep his body limber than anything. Emm had glanced at him and her expression had instantly darkened, eyes narrowed and voice bleached of inflexion.

He'd stopped and waited and done it again just to see what happened. Every time he reminded her of his presence, her instinctual response was to cower. She hadn't afforded him this level of respect when he'd been tied down, or even when she'd spoken with him in the lobby. He'd spooked her badly. Still, it was a heady thought to be able to affect a stranger so easily and so completely.

The reptilian had done nothing after regaining control of their body, only sat up against the bed and waited patiently. There was nothing to read in these alien features for Lorca, neither anger nor fear, but it surprised him a little that Emm didn't use the reptilian to turn the table back in her favour. A real fight between Lorca and them would be very short and very painful on his part. If Emm played her cards right, she could have him dismembered before he had time to bring the phaser up.

The thought seemed not to have crossed her mind, however, and he wasn't going to help her out.

For what it was worth, the deal itself was going fairly well. Non-confrontational as Kodos could be when it suited him, he almost matched Emm's level of diminutive behaviour, slowly putting her enough at ease to at least believe some parts of the story were true. Emm might not trust them as terrans, or Lorca as _Lorca, _but she believed they really did want to make that deal with her.

Unlike Earth, Terra still maintained a monetary economy, although it only applied to the lower classes, those who had no power of their own and needed something else to barter with among themselves. Powerful terrans didn't need to buy and sell anything, because they could just take whatever they wanted so money didn't matter to them.

Emm outright rejected the Terran Imperial Credits Kodos offered her, fearing it could be tracked and Kodos could not convince her otherwise. Though, the money scheme was in fact fairly foolproof. Even if someone were to try and track it, it would eventually lead to the conclusion it had come from a black budget account owned by someone very high up in the terran hierarchy and therefore someone who simply wouldn't be investigated. Marlena had been instrumental in setting it up, but it maintained itself automatically. All they needed to do now was transfer money information from ships they boarded. In terms of money, Lorca supposed, he was quite rich now.

Emm was more interested in the military schematics Kodos was offering her, weapons and armour were valuable and difficult to come by outside the law and without the right genetics. She didn't like Culber's pins, suspicious of the inherent drawback of putting drugs out on the street to do what damage they could. She accepted them anyway.

Emm needed four days of preparation to get the dilithium, since it had to be syphoned out of the stocks gradually, to mask its disappearance in the amount Lorca needed. He'd expected that and he needed the time to secure passage off the planet. He also needed to get Sennai somehow. He wasn't quite sure if Emm would be willing to help out with that issue, though.

"Emm," Lorca said when she and Kodos were wrapping things up.

She looked at him, blinked as if she had trouble focussing, and sucked in a deep breath to steady herself.

Lorca said, "I think I owe you a drink. You mentioned a bar not far from here. Join me?"

She didn't immediately respond, began a shrug and aborted it. She stood up and her body changed, turning her from beautiful into a far more fearsome alien. Bigger and heavier, thick hair framing a deeply lined face. In his universe, being shown the true face of a chameloid was a sign of affection, reserved for family and close friends or lovers. He doubted that was what Emm was going for here.

Lorca suppressed a chuckle and said, "I think a human shape might be better around here."

"I don't plan to drink with you," Emm said.

"Why not? I owe you a drink, but also an explanation."

"I have work to do," she said.

"An hour won't make a difference."

Casually, he walked towards the table, ignored the way she shifted to the side, though still well enough within striking distance if she wanted to. In her true form, he could well imagine her being a formidable opponent, but the thought didn't even seem to occur to her.

He put her phaser on the table next to her. He said nothing, the gesture was clear enough. Then turned away and crossed to the bed to release the feeble shackles on the reptilian's arm. There was a moment, then, when the bonds retracted and the reptilian stirred into motion when Lorca sensed the considerations coming off them. _Attack now. Attack now and put an end to it all. _And a snarling part of Lorca's consciousness answered. _Try me. _

Instead, the reptilian merely stood up, filling the room.

Lorca turned back towards Emm, resisting the urge to gain a saver distance to the reptilian as all his instincts demanded he do. If a show of faith was all Emm wanted, she could have it. He spread his arms out in a placating gesture.

"Do you want me to say 'please'?"

Emm still hesitated. He knew she thought he wasn't really giving her a choice, mocking her and showing his power once again, simply by putting himself in a vulnerable position. But there was no gesture he could make which would give her back the sense of control he had taken. It was the wrong universe for that.

"One drink," she finally relented. "I don't have time for more if you want your dilithium."

"That's all I asked."

* * *

Within the dark haze of the bar, Lorca remembered just how tired he was. The music beat against his consciousness, something mixed in with it to cause tangible sensations like a finger down his spine, playing with his fight or flight instincts, never quite settling on excitement or arousal or fear.

The drink was good, though, just as Emm had promised and as time progressed, he thought she was warming a bit towards him, though he suspected the alcohol and the mesmerising quality of the music had its share in the effect.

Back in her human male shape, Emm's only revealing feature was rendered invisible in the dim lighting and at some point, she had started smoking a large cigar, the smoke adding a layer of diffusion between them. Sometimes he thought she was going to offer him a drag, then thought better of it. Too intimate, perhaps and he hardly minded. Spending as time as he had in the enclosed environment of space stations and starships hadn't lent itself to develop the habit.

"What if I told you that everything I've said was true?" he asked.

"About what?"

"About me."

She choked back a laugh, still skittish around him, a fear rooted too deeply to be banished so easily. "The sex clones?"

He merely shrugged. "Not what I meant, but do you have any doubts about the depravity of the emperor's court?"

"You tell me," she said, a slither of challenge in her tone and he shook his head, dismissing the topic.

"What I mean is," he started, stopped to pick his words. "There are many universes parallel to this one, each similar, yet different. And with the right technology travelling there is no different than breaking the warp barrier. It's the same technology that powered the Emperor's palace ship. I've been to these other places, you know. I've seen them."

"As far as I'm concerned," she said and he could tell she didn't want his words to affect her, burying her curiosity deep inside her glass. "I've got enough problems right here, don't need to go looking for them elsewhere."

"But imagine the possibilities."

He raised his hand to silence her objection, glad for once of the power he held over her when she let her words fade away unvoiced. He said, "Or rather, imagine what it does to a man who has only ever known his own ambition, to see into infinity and to realise that his way is not the only way. The _Empire_ is not the only way. There is a whole universe on the other side, where they have a union of alien worlds, each interacting on eye level, respecting and helping each other and it doesn't make them weak. It makes them stronger."

He paused before he got carried away, unwilling to dive so deep into his own feelings he could get lost in them, honest as it would be. Just as with Sennai, revealing too much might undermine his intentions.

"Obviously, that's not _our _way, either," he said, sharper now, bringing them both back a step. "But, if the Empire doesn't reform, it will destroy itself and take everything with it."

Emm said nothing, struggling with her thoughts, trying to figure out what she thought of what he'd said.

"Is there another version of you in this parallel universe?" she asked and for a split second, he was convinced she knew everything. Only, of course, she was merely attacking his character in a roundabout way.

He chuckled, "Yes."

"What would he say?"

"Nothing you would believe."

Perhaps it was just a trick of the light, an effect of the music or the drink, but he thought he spotted the hint of a smile on Emm's face, just before she hid it behind her glass. Though, it still lingered at the corners of her eyes as she lowered it, laced through her voice when she said, "Gabriel Lorca the reformer."

It wasn't as mocking as she could have made it, disbelieving but without the sharp edges of true suspicion.

"I never thought those were the reforms you were going for," she added pointedly.

He had read more about _Lorca's _policies than he cared to remember, had sat there listening to Culber going on about it and downing one glass after the other in hopes it would make things easier to stomach.

"I'm old enough to have learned a few things," he said with a slight smile. "I think maybe the universe hates waste. And the Empire is wasting a lot of potential by keeping so many aliens on the fringes. You could make us all far more powerful."

Because who would believe a terran who claimed he didn't want power?

"You and I, we'll never see that different Empire," he continued and thought of the cruelty of saying all this to her when it was nothing but a snare. The truth was, he couldn't save this empire and none of its slaves from themselves or their masters. He recognised an impossible task when he saw one.

"But I fully intend to put it on the right path. And to do that, right now, all I need is some dilithium."

"Well," she said. "We already made a deal. I wouldn't last long in this business if I didn't stick with deals I made, but if you want me to feel better about it…"

"I need one other thing."

The atmosphere of the place dulled the impact of what he said just enough so he didn't quite drive her away again, give her the incentive to rebuilt the walls he had started to erode with the bare beginnings of the vision he had painted for her.

"There is a vulcan scientist," Lorca said. "She is a specialist in the technology I mentioned. I need her help."

"She's what, indentured? A slave?"

"No, she just doesn't want to help."

And the mood shifted, finally, back to the dark place it had been before. The moment's reprieve from the millennia of tyranny already falling by the wayside.

"And you don't take 'no' for an answer," Emm said, bitterly, remembering her own attempt, not so long ago to deny him. "You think she'll like it, too?"

He didn't flinch at the reminder.

"She'll see the logic of it," he said and paused for a moment as Emm hid her face behind a gust of cigar smoke.

Lorca added, "I won't treat her badly. Sometimes people need to be saved against their will, that's all."

She tapped the cigar against her lips in thought, eyes narrowed at him. "There is this terran saying, every time you open your mouth, I think of it. A leopard can't change its spots."

"Maybe," he conceded. "But I can pick who I bite."

She looked down as if the rapidly depleting contents of her glass were the most interesting thing in the world.

"I don't deal in slaves," she finally said.

"That's not…"

"It's the expertise you need," she interrupted him, perhaps not wanting to listen to another sermon of a universe far better than hers. "Abducting aliens, that's what slavers do. It doesn't happen here a lot, but Zralisss used to work for one of them before we partnered up. She can help you out."

Emm lifted her gaze and dug it into his. "If she wants to."

"For the right price."

Her sense of superiority wavered at the reminder and she took a deep breath. "Yeah," she said and looked away as if searching for answers in the blurred milling of people in the darkness.

"There's something we really need," she finally said. She had the look of someone who was about to make one of the hardest cases of her life and expected to be laughed off the podium.

Lorca just waited, hoping it she would ask for something he could actually provide.

"It's food," she said. "That is, better nutritional matrices. Food for the slaves, indentured workers and the free working class is regulated and gets restricted at the whims of those in charge. We can salvage old food synthesisers and replicators and get them working again, but they're inefficient and many produce barely anything more edible than the raw waste we put in."

"The matrix used on my ship is human-centric, it can be adapted, but only within limits."

"You tried the noodles at the hotel, didn't you? That's what terran customers get, can you imagine what's on the menu for the rest of us? Your ship... I don't see you riding just any old garbage hauler."

Lorca chuckled a little as he thought of the Defiant. At home, it was a mark of honour to be given command of a Constitution-class ship, though of course, he had merely stolen it so it hardly counted.

"Whatever you have," Emm said, a slight frown on her face at his reaction. "I bet it's better than ours. That's what we need. Just food. That's the price."

"And Zralisss will stand by the deal?"

"Zralisss and I, we've been partners for a long time. I go where she can't because she wouldn't be allowed in here, do you think that's the first time it's happened?"

"No," Lorca said with an inward sigh. "No, I don't."

The truth of it was uncomfortable, but familiar, sneaking into Lorca's consciousness on the back of the insistent beat of the music, reminding Lorca not only of where he was but made him acutely aware of his surroundings. When Emm had approached him in the lobby of the hotel, she had mentioned this bar and she would have had to know the kind of place it was. Had her invitation been only an attempt to buy time, because he'd come back too early and she hadn't been ready? It was difficult to see in the darkness, the smoke and flashing lights, but not few of the patrons were using the effect of the music to get frisky with each other. It wasn't something he suspected Emm had in mind for him, not after she'd shifted into her true form to turn him away. She found him distasteful, probably in the same way _Lorca _would have been disgusted at her alienness.

As he finished his drink in silence, watching her smoke the last of her cigar, he considered making a pass at her anyway. It would at least be refreshing to face rejection after the months of blanket consent his crew offered him, a reminder that he was not — as his counterpart thought of himself — in a fact, a king of any kind.

Though, what kind of person would he be if he asked, knowing full well that she might be too intimidated to say no, especially after so much of their dealings so far had pivoted on that point? He didn't want to put her into such a position.

He paid for their drinks, carefully disinterested in the monetary transaction despite his lack of familiarity with the attitude in general. Emm made no comment and would have left him standing there in the orange gloom of the city street the moment the doors slipped closed after their passing.

"Why did you invite me here?" Lorca asked before he could stop himself. The remnant sensation still traced hooked tentacles up and down his spine, even more pronounced now that their immediate cause had faded to a distant tremor.

"_You_ invited _me_," she pointed out and thought about for a moment before adding, "Thanks."

"No, I meant before, in the lobby, you were coming on to me."

Emm blanched, but the effect was barely visible.

"I was just trying to keep you oblivious, the element of surprise, you know," she answered and met his gaze, alien pupils made apparent by her wide-open eyes.

He nodded then shrugged. "Well, your loss," he said as he turned away. "Be in touch about those deals we've made, I won't forget."

Darkly, she answered, "Neither will I."

It was good enough to alleviate his paranoia. He trusted Marlena's vetting process enough not to direct him to a dealer who would betray him the first chance they got. And beyond that, he knew he had offered Emm a deal she couldn't justify walking away from, even if it meant striking a blow at him. He wasn't sure if she believed his stories about the Federation, but it wouldn't something she could easily dismiss it either.

As he left the bar behind, he mulled it over in his mind. It was all the Federation had become, a story to tell, something to barter with to neutralise his counterpart's reputation on a one on one basis even if the wider context was out of reach. Besides, _Lorca _didn't deserve to be redeemed even in the eyes of the galaxy which had spawned him and shaped him into the man he had become. Sometimes, it was an easy allure to succumb to, Lorca would admit, if only in the rare privacy of his mind, when his barriers were worn down. It was easy to seize power in this galaxy, all he had to do was reach out and take it. Sometimes, it was shocking just how easily it came to him to just say and do what was required to put himself ahead.

He thought of what Sennai had said and tried to picture what it would look like if he truly set out to make this into his home. What would he become, then? All his ambitions so far had been focused on going home, his energy aimed for just that one goal, disregarding all other opportunities. In truth, he didn't _want _to stay, he still wanted to go home, but what if Sennai failed him? A million things could still go wrong, Sennai could stand by her refusal no matter what he told her, or perhaps she would end up simply being unable to rebuild the spore drive, what then?

The Empire had a new Empress on the throne, after going through a substantial number of contenders in a mere handful of days, it was unlikely this one was the best of the bunch. She was just another indication of the inherent flaws of the Empire, which would eventually bring it to its knees. The aliens _Lorca _saw scratching at the borders of terran power, they would eventually reach critical numbers and simply sweep it away. _Lorca _had been wrong about many things, but he had seen the signs quite clearly.

Good riddance to this rotten hellhole, Lorca thought, but it was a stance he could only take if he could leave it behind. If he had to stay, he would have to turn his attentions back to the Empire.

A minor shift in the crowds slowly dispersing out of his path worked itself too late into his consciousness. He only spotted the couple when they were right in front of him, making his steps stutter for the time it took for either of them to each grip one of his wrists and pin him to the nearest wall. The impact wasn't too hard, but the woman followed it immediately, crowding him into the corner with her weight. She leaned her face close to his, blue-painted lips framing sharp teeth in a predatory smirk.

"We," she cooed, "want a piece of you."

Her companion slid his hand between Lorca's and the woman's body and for a moment Lorca merely registered their intentions as antagonistic, but not immediately hostile. The man's groping hand wasn't trying to disarm him.

Lorca snorted and dropped his head back to look down at the two of them.

"Wait your turn," Lorca said, the sheer, casual _disrespect _of the approach made some inner part of him snarl angrily. He was tired of all the fighting, of days and weeks and _months _of it, which was not to count all the times he'd been attacked since setting foot on this forsaken planet. Everything was violence in this place, it seemed, even picking up a random stranger off the street to complete some sexual fantasy. Though, if it was violence they wanted, he could certainly provide.

It wasn't hard to shake them loose, using the hold the woman had on him as leverage, he yanked her towards her partner roughly and slipped away from the wall, watched them tumble with something akin to curiosity. Then, as she caught herself on the wall, grinning wildly and preparing to launch herself from the wall back at him, Lorca punched into her side, settled his hand on her neck and thrust her head down to meet first his knee and then the wall again. She choked on her own cry.

In the time it took for her to crumple at his feet, Lorca had pulled the dagger from its holster at his thigh, bringing it up just in time to make the man stop short in the middle of his own lunge just so the tip of Lorca's dagger scraped down the centre of his chin to come to rest just above his Adam's apple.

The man was grinning wildly, though he raised his hands in mock surrender.

"Knew you liked it rough," the man said with a triumphant glance at the woman.

"You have no idea."

Lorca stepped around him, out of reach of the woman in case she gathered her wits, tracing the tip of the dagger along his jaw until it rested right over the excitedly pulsing artery.

"Let's take this somewhere private," the man drawled, seemingly oblivious to Lorca's blade at his neck.

"You're wasting my time," Lorca said.

Lorca cast a disdainful look from the man to the woman, then back sharply just before the man could make a move. Lorca had hoped to see the naked lust there begin to waver at the very real threat of Lorca's blade, but found he had stoked the flames even more. It would be easy to just finish him off, leave him bleeding out in the street next to his girlfriend as she struggled to catch her breath. He suspected the two of them would get off on even that.

Lorca stepped around the man, letting the tip of the blade trace his progress until he stood right behind the man so he shielded him from the woman in case she was able to mount an attack. Though, she seemed to be relaxing into the wall, one of her hands coming up to lovingly stroke her bruised side before she settled her other hand over her crotch.

Bracing himself, Lorca stepped in close behind the man, gripped his forehead and forced him back against him, knowing full well he was playing to their fantasies. But the blade's threat seemed to be doing its work because the man did not, as Lorca had expected, rut right back into him but kept himself as still as possible.

Lorca leaned in close to the side of the man's head and made eye contact with the woman over his shoulder.

"Leave. Me. Alone," Lorca hissed lowly. "If I ever see you again, what I'll do to you will be over too quickly for you to enjoy."

He held the blade where it was, flicked a glance towards the man, letting the seconds trickle away until he knew he had made his meaning clear. He snapped the blade away and let go of the man, took one careful step back from the pair. Neither of them moved, but when he took another step back to break through the sparse circle of onlookers the altercation had attracted, he heard the man begin to chuckle. The woman joined in until both were laughing.

By then, Lorca had made it to the other side of the street, the eyepatch allowed him to keep them in view longer as he moved away. The man offered his hand to the woman and helped her to her feet, pulling her into a tight embrace and a hungry kiss.

While Lorca had entertained Emm, Kodos had moved them into another hotel. It was similar to the first if anything even more rundown. The lights in the lobby had mostly failed, leaving the place in semi-abandoned dilapidation. The two food replicators were flickering error messages as Lorca passed within their sensor range as if reminding him of the scope of the deal he had made over Zralisss' fate.

The room Kodos had secured was less luxurious, too, two beds set up on either side of the door, synthetic bedding meant of one-time use. A narrow door looked to be leading to what sorry excuse of a bathroom this place offered.

Kodos was sitting up on one of the beds, head leaned back into a wall, dozing. He looked young in this world, inexperienced, someone who had gone in over his head and had no idea what he was doing. Just a bureaucrat from a backwater, insignificant planet. No one cared about him either way. Even in his universe, they had never looked deeper into his death, never even bothered to make absolutely sure the body they found belonged to him at all, letting a mass murderer potentially walk free.

The sight of him made Lorca stop, regarding him, indulging in the slow, black tar swirl of his mood, letting the events of the day wash through him and feed into the seething anger.

"Kodos," he said, loud enough to startle the other man awake.

A frown settled on the man's face, a moment of sleepiness wiped away when he saw Lorca. "I thought we used our…"

_"Kodos." _

He took the hint and swallowed down any other objection he might have had.

"When I left earlier," Lorca said, sounding frighteningly clam even to his own ears, painfully aware that there was nothing he could not do right now and not walk free, too.

"I told you to wait. But you didn't, did you? You took matters into your own hands and you reached out to the contact Moreau had given is." He very carefully wasn't making it a question, just an assertion, he might as well have been there.

"We didn't have _time…" _Kodos said, doing his best to sound reasonable.

"I gave you a direct order."

"Yes, but…"

"But you knew better," Lorca finished for him, the calm slowly peeling away. "You looked at the situation and thought you knew better. You needed to make the call because nobody else would."

He lifted a finger towards Kodos, then flexed his hand into a fist. "You are just the same. I'll tell you something. In my universe, Kodos seized control of the Tarsus colony and ordered the massacre of thousands of people because he thought he knew better. I was there and you have no idea what I've lost."

He dropped his hands by his side, returned Kodos stare evenly, basked in the sudden realisation there and the fear it caused, now that every caustic remark Lorca had ever levelled his direction made sense.

"You're dead man walking," Lorca said. "Don't step out of line again."

He broke into motion and Kodos flinched, unsure of where to go and what to do with himself. Lorca shrugged the overcoat from his shoulders and let the weaponry it contained drag it to the floor as she stepped out of it. Without looking at Kodos again, he slowly disarmed himself, tossing the phaser and dagger to the unoccupied bad, one after the other until only the small blade in his boot remained. He pulled it out but kept it in his hand as he made his way to the bathroom.

"We'll be sleeping in shifts," Lorca said. "Since you've already started, I'll wake you in five hours."

He looked over his shoulder as he pushed the bathroom door open and gave Kodos a small, unpleasant smile, knowing full well sleep wasn't going to be comfortable for him any time soon. And he could count himself lucky a little discomfort and insecurity were all he was facing right now.

* * *

_End of Chapter 5_

* * *

**Note: **I changed "glucose matrix" to "nutrional matrix" on the assumption not every alien's diet will be compatible with glucose.

It's also ridiculously hard to figure out how a money-free economy would work.

**Author's Note: **Grammarly thinks my writing is a bit bland. I think it might be onto something there. I really need to read books again before my vocabulary shrinks down even more.


	6. The Longest Way Around…

**Note: **This is a two-chapter upload!

* * *

**Chapter 6: The Longest Way Around…**

* * *

Tyler relaxed back in the captain's chair, watching the readouts in his armrest display and listening to the status reports as they trickled in. He had to admit, Bell had done the impossible and fixed both the warp drive and the cloak in record time. She hadn't been slow to point out how everything was held together by duct-tape and curses and their worn down dilithium crystals were an ever-present problem.

They had patched the damage the torpedo had done with plates of scrap metal to lessen the power drain on the containment field and sealed off shuttle bay completely. It was hardly a permanent fix, but enough to guarantee structural integrity of the ship during warp.

Bell had recommended not going over warp four, but while Tyler agreed, he needed to know how far he could push the ship in an emergency.

They had been running simulations all day and he was beginning to detect a certain tired sluggishness in his bridge crew. It had been a problem from the start, of course, they were too few people for a ship this size, making double shifts both a regular and mandatory occurrence, aided liberally by Doctor Culber's pins, though Lorca was keeping tabs on everyone's consumption and wasn't shy to order an intervention when he deemed the pin use excessive.

Everyone's consumption but his own, as Tyler had discovered in Lorca's files, but what the Captain did or did not do was nobody's concern. Tyler had filed the information away for later use, just in case.

The results of the warp five test didn't look particularly good to Tyler's eyes, but he only had surface knowledge of engineering so it didn't concern him too much.

"Bridge to Engineering," he said.

_"Kriger here, commander." _

The current arrangement of the shift schedule placed Kriger firmly in charge of most of the simulation, the result — even if accidentally — of one of Lorca's policies. He knew the constant pressure on his crew and the overuse of drugs threatened to fray out his people, so one of the iron rules of shift schedules were non-negotiable rest periods. Kriger had a chance to shine while Bell slept, probably badly.

"Do we have enough data to extrapolate system stability on warp?"

_"We should be save to jump to warp one to five even when cloaked, sir." _

"What about higher warp speeds? We should be able to go to eight."

While looking at the shift schedules, Tyler had forgotten to pay attention to _everyone, _not that it made much of a difference. At the time, he wouldn't have considered how irritating Ferasini's presence on the bridge was going to be. He felt her gaze digging into the side of his head from where she had turned away from the science station, her objections obvious and entirely unvoiced.

_"I wouldn't recommend it, sir," _Kriger said in a tone of voice that suggested he was understating the issue.

"Well, can you recommend warp six or seven?"

_"Sir, we might be able to, but not for long and it might reverse the progress we've made."_

"It might?" Tyler asked.

He told himself he heard the slight shift of clothing, the indrawn breath just shy of a hiss before Ferasini spoke.

"Commander," she said with no apparent regard for his rank or current position. "What Commander Kriger is saying is that we _could _stress-test warp six, seven and eight. But then we'll probably not _have_ warp six, seven and eight when we need them."

Tyler tilted his head at her and smiled a little, "I got that. Do you think I'm stupid?"

She thought everyone was stupid, of course, but he was curious to find out whether she had the guts to say it to him in public. He caught the annoyance flash across her expression, and she merely shook her head.

"I suggest we test the phaser banks," she said, doing the smart thing by ignoring his loaded question. She raised her hands in a placating gesture, then waved them in careless dismissal. "We now know we can run from a fight, but I would like to know if we can stand our ground and for how long."

Nice attempt at attacking his ability to lead, Tyler conceded. Fighting simulations were planned for later that day anyway, but she just _had _to put the finger on it early enough to make it seem irrelevant.

"I would like to know that, too," Tyler agreed. After all, if you can't beat them, join them. "Commander Kriger?"

_"Yes, sir." _

"Let's give the warp drive a break and put the impulse through its paces."

_"Aye, sir."_

Tyler got up from his seat, "But can you spare Lieutenant Alibali for a moment? I need to speak to her in my ready room."

_"I'll send her right up." _

Tyler looked around the bridge and Ferasini seemed to be the only one looking back. Well, Ferasini and Irsa who stood pinned and motionless next to the turbolift door. Tyler didn't know about Irsa's orders, or whether she simply assumed with Lorca off the ship, she was now supposed to guard Tyler. She made him slightly uncomfortable, but he assumed she was having the same effect on everyone, something Tyler quite appreciated.

Ferasini said nothing, but neither did she attempt to hide her suspicion. Tyler wasn't sure what her endgame was. Lorca's decision to keep her from ever commanding the ship must still rankle. Ostensibly based on her lack of military or spaceflight experience, the true reason was obvious to everyone. Lorca might be sleeping with her, but he didn't trust her with the ship. That had to be a blow to her ego.

Perhaps she saw an opportunity to oust Tyler, thinking of him as a weaker link than Lorca. Either a chance to take over, as Lorca feared, or just to prove the truth of her loyalty and thus advance in rank. Both were possible and neither made Tyler particularly fond of her or her haughty, overbearing presence on his bridge.

Ferasini was, however, hardly the most pressing problem of his current command.

As Alibali stepped out of the turbolift and saluted, Tyler nodded at her and walked her into the quiet of the ready room, unwilling to admit the door closing behind him brought the slightest relief.

Alibali was another one of Lorca's private projects. Like Irsa. Or Bell. Or perhaps even Moreau, off on the Enterprise doing her thing for him.

As far as Tyler was concerned, Alibali was little more than a walking computer, one with the common human failings still attached to her, but it wasn't going to pay off to treat her as such. She would have got used to a certain level of respect under Lorca's oversight and might not relish being put in her place too harshly or too quickly.

She stopped in front of the standing desk and Tyler lingered for a moment in her blind spot before he stepped past her to lean on the desk.

"Lieutenant, I know you are needed in Engineering, so I'll be brief," Tyler said, doing his best to add some affable warmth into his tone.

She only inclined her head in response.

Tyler said, "We've all heard Captain Lorca's speech as he left for Yemuro. He has…"

Tyler stopped himself, unsure how to phrase it when he didn't know Alibali's feelings on the matter. Tyler took a breath, gave Alibali a slight smile.

"I'll be blunt, Lieutenant. I don't care why the Captain implemented a self-destruct option in case he didn't return, but I'm concerned if it might become an issue. We've suffered some serious damage and I'm worried whatever the Captain has done might be accidentally triggered."

He was also worried about the rift it was creating among the crew. There were those whose faith in Lorca was unwavering, but there were other voices, getting slightly louder every day, who whispered of how Lorca's promises to them had been empty and how he would simply destroy them at a whim, just like Emperor Georgiou was known to do.

Tyler doubted the more social aspects of the problem had much meaning to Alibali, so he kept it to himself.

"Has Captain Lorca spoken to you about the self-destruct?"

Alibali avoided his gaze, but it didn't necessarily mean she was hiding anything from him. She rarely made eye-contact, even when it would be appropriate to do so.

"He hasn't told me anything."

"Okay," Tyler said, unsure if he believed her or not. "Doesn't matter. But you agree with my assessment that there could be problems?"

Asking for her opinion and expertise would be exactly the kind of ego-stroking she would have become used to. It was important for Alibali to know she was just as important to Tyler's command as she had been to Lorca's.

"Without knowing how it was implemented, I couldn't say, sir. But I assume it would require the computer to monitor for Lorca's absence or at least the expected window of time of his return. We don't have any problems with the computer, so we should be safe."

"_Maybe _we are safe isn't a very good answer," Tyler pointed out. "This programme that has to be running, can you find it and turn it off?"

She flicked her gaze up at him, then immediately back down to the front edge of the desk.

"I'm not sure," she said.

Tyler leaned forward a little and kept his silence long enough that she was finally forced to look directly at him. It was difficult to hold her gaze and he didn't want to give her an order which might distract her from what he was saying. Alibali was able to focus on only one thing at any given time, everybody knew that.

"Let me be perfectly clear here," Tyler said. "No one intends to take Captain Lorca's ship from him. We have only ourselves to blame if he felt such a threat was necessary. But our loyalties, of every single person on this ship, are absolute and they're absolutely with Captain Lorca. I'm not asking you to betray him. I'm asking you to help protect his ship so we can hand it back to him in a _somewhat_ decent condition."

"I can try," she said with a disconcerting lack of inflexion, none of her thoughts obvious to guess at.

"I'll talk to Chief Bell, get her to give you some spare time from Engineering to look into this. We're mostly up and running, there should be some leeway."

Alibali nodded and for a moment, she looked like she was going to say something, perhaps an objection or even reveal something of her own thoughts and feelings. When nothing came, Tyler gave her another warm smile.

"Thank you, Lieutenant. Dismissed."

Perhaps Tyler was over-interpreting the minuscule reaction in her face, but he thought he saw a hint of the relief she felt at being let off the hook. She saluted with machine-like precision, leaving the ready room with a stiff-legged stride.

Tyler followed her out immediately, feeling a little self-satisfied at Ferasini's withering look. She was just _dying _to know what he had needed Alibali for. Yet, she would never reveal the vulnerability of her curiosity by asking. He pulled the chair towards himself and slouched back into a comfortable position.

"Let's see how well we fight, shall we?" he said.

* * *

Lorca watched his own hand as he reached upward as if it didn't quite belong to him, resting his fingers against the locking mechanism of the slave collar. Zralisss' warmth had seeped into it in the short hour she had been wearing it. He stood so close, he thought he could feel the slightest gravitational pull from her size, the resting strength of her far superior to his own. It must be terrifying to be a terran in this galaxy, to know you've set yourself up to be an enemy of so many species, many of them stronger than you are, or smarter, or more advanced, and still trying to delude yourself into being the apex predator when biology had made you, at best, uninviting prey.

Lorca was not used to such an instinctual fear of aliens, but he was beginning to understand how it might fuel the deep-seated hatred he saw.

He attached the leash from Zralisss' slave collar and held it limply in his hand, vaguely disgusted at its simple existence. Connected, it could deliver a debilitating charge.

"I'm sorry about that," he said and Zralisss looked at him.

"I cannot walk freely without a terran minder outside the alien quarters," she said. It didn't seem to bother her.

"I know," Lorca said, he wrapped the end of the leash around his hand and wrist for a secure hold. "I'm still sorry."

Zralisss made that sound again, which the universal translator managed to interpret as laughter only after a delay. Lorca supposed terrans just had never bothered to calibrate the device for Zralisss' species properly.

"Emm warned me you might say something like this."

Lorca sighed. "Just indulge me."

In much the same way the crew of the Defiant thought of it as a simple idiosyncrasy, he added to himself. A quirk of character, puzzling but ultimately too trivial to matter.

He stood back a good arms' length from Zralisss, considering the getup and running his mind through the next few steps.

Kodos and Emm were already at the bottom of the nearest space elevator and passage secured on a worker ferry. These ships carried workers to off world facilities around Yemuro's planetary system. They weren't warp capable, unarmed and unarmored, offering only the bare basics of facilities, just enough the faceless members of the workforce could be carted to and fro without too much die-off en route. Because the ferries didn't leave the system, they only ran minimal security checks upon boarding and their route took them to the outermost planet's orbit, the perfect spot for the Defiant to pick them up while the only opposition they would face out there were automated drones, at least for the few moments it took for the Defiant to beam them over.

Out in the street, the leashed gorn attracted somewhat more attention than Lorca on his own would have done, but none of it was openly hostile, or more than passing curiosity, which was unlikely to manifest into anything detrimental to his plan and he needed Zralisss to quickly subdue Sennai in case she still didn't want to see reason.

The plan was simple, much simpler than Emm had led him to believe when they struck their deal. He wasn't entirely sure if it was deception on her part or not. Certainly, if he meant to take a free alien specialist and force her into somebody else's employ, the steps he'd have to take were more complicated. He would need to change Sennai's work and living permits, make her old contract disappear so she could legally leave the planet and work somewhere else. None of these were Lorca's concern, but perhaps Emm hadn't grasped this fully. On the other hand, he wouldn't mind if she'd chosen to fleece him for whatever she could get from him. The replicator matrices cost him nothing to share and they might make a small difference to the people on Yemuro.

He wondered if Zralisss would give him a straight answer if he asked, idly twisting her leash in his hands. He decided it didn't matter to him and if Emm and Zralisss derived some small satisfaction if they felt they'd won something against him, it was an easy burden to bear.

Sennai commuted to and from her work-place daily. Zralisss had suggested the best place to pick her up would be before she reached the relative safety of the vulcan quarters.

Lorca sat at a small table outside a café, while Zralisss stood motionless, looming large and casting a diffuse shadow over him. He wanted to offer her a seat, but the baleful look the waiter had given the gorn when they'd arrived told him it might cause some issue.

The waiter gave Zralisss a wide berth as he brought Lorca the scotch he'd ordered and withdrew without so much as a word.

The synthehol left the expected aftertaste in his mouth, Lorca had never found it unpleasant as such, but it certainly couldn't pass for the real thing.

The seat offered a nearly unobstructed view of the transport hub Sennai used in her daily commute and he'd picked it so she would be forced to pass him by. Zralisss would be easy to spot and draw the eye, he was confident Sennai would see him and come to him.

In the end, this was exactly what she did. Lorca tagged her in the middle of the crowd spilling from the platform just a second before she spotted him in turn and stopped, turned into the stillness of a statue in the middle of a moving sea. Her gaze sharp enough to penetrate the distance. In her stillness, someone else moved in close by her shoulder, another vulcan, taking position next to her.

Lorca took a leisurely sip off the scotch, keeping his own gaze fixed on them, watched as Sennai broke the stillness and began walking towards him, the other vulcan trailing behind her with badly concealed reluctance. As they got closer, Lorca recognised the other vulcan as one of the gang who had attacked him outside Sennai's quarters. Well…

Sennai stopped by his table, fixed on him and ignoring the gorn completely. Her young companion was less discreet, giving Zralisss a long once-over before he, too, looked at Lorca.

"There is no point in asking again," Sennai said.

"Oh, I disagree," he said and smiled a little. "You see, I made a deal."

"A deal for _my_ aid, but without my involvement?"

"Hmm," Lorca shrugged.

"You've come to force me, haven't you?" Sennai asked.

"It doesn't have to be force," Lorca said. "The deal is this: Your aid for replicator matrices that will feed hundreds. Or are you more important than the needs of so many?"

Sennai looked at Zralisss and the gorn nodded.

"Nobody believes a liar!" Sennai's young companion said.

"Ah, but have I lied?" Lorca asked.

"Terrans always lie."

"I'm not terran."

"Hah!" the vulcan snorted, unable to stop the triumph from breaking through his veneer of vulcan control. "A lie!"

He took a step forward, bringing him level with Sennai and right up against the table. Lorca dropped his head back so he could meet his gaze, knowing he was posing a challenge the other might not be able to resist when he looked this ready to spring.

"Mejek," Sennai said quietly and her companion's response was instantaneous. "This is not the place."

Lorca took another sip off the scotch, hiding the sudden urge to bait the young vulcan into action. His posturing was irritating, his complete lack of understanding of the world he was living in grated on Lorca's nerves. Here this young vulcan stood, barely more than a slave and surrounded by the slave-keepers, thinking he had anything to bargain with. Didn't he understand he had to be smarter than this?

Sennai's face gave nothing away when she said, "I will come."

"It's a mistake," Mejek said, but did so quietly.

Sennai looked at him. "The logic here is obvious. Think on it until you understand."

She turned her attention back to Lorca. "I'll need some time to prepare."

"You _had _time," he said. "We're leaving now."

When he got up, it shook Mejek into motion, a curious combination of fight or flight, before he forced himself to not react.

Sennai creased her eyebrows, displeased with it, but she only took a moment to understand the nature of the deal she had made. She turned to Mejek and said, "Please take care of my possessions, but be careful. Once I'm found to be missing, there will be an investigation. It's best if no one knows about you."

"I don't care about the logic," Mejek said with a sneer. "It's a mistake." He gave Lorca a baleful look. "He'll betray you."

"No," Sennai said. "He'll use my skills until he has no need for them anymore, just like my employers here. Go home, Mejek, and know you have my gratitude."

Mejek looked perfectly willing to keep arguing, but he seemed at least smart enough to recognise when a discussion wasn't going to go anywhere. The gaze he dropped on Lorca was full or rage, kept badly in check by Sennai's words and the pervasive, ever-present power imbalance dictated by the society he lived in.

It was amusing to think, if he'd chosen to make a scene, Lorca's feeble camouflage would have come off, leaving him exposed and defenceless.

Lorca made a gesture back towards the transport hub Sennai had come from and she preceded him in that direction, Lorca following behind with Zralisss on her leash trailing behind. Mejek's glare followed them all the way until they were out of sight.

* * *

The transport hub just underneath the towering structure of the space elevator was host to a somewhat different bustle than the city streets themselves. It was quieter, people weren't so much milling about as they were standing in untidy lines, waiting for their ferry to begin boarding.

Lorca eyed the small, hovering drones just below the ceiling, his every step closely watched by a computer algorithm, ready to spring the moment he did something suspicious.

At least the trade with Emm had gone through without a hitch. A small favour he hadn't dared to hope for. A heavy strap crossed Kodos' chest to the metal suitcase by his hip, containing the precious dilithium crystals. Next to him, Emm stood in her female alien form, a slave collar around her neck, but without a leash attached. It made it easier to move around here, she'd said. She'd be screened at the entrance of the hub and trying to pass for human would just cause trouble.

"You're booked," Emm said. "Security checks have all come up clean, the suitcase is insulated, the dilithium won't show up on the scanner."

"Thank you," Lorca said, tracking the strap on Kodos to the case. "We…"

From his expanded field of vision, he spotted the drone drop down behind him to hove near his head, a red light flicking to alarm, but before Lorca could do anything with the tiny advance warning, the drone shot an energy beam at his neck and collapsed. Unexpectedly, there was very little pain, except for hitting the ground without being able to brace for it. His body wasn't even entirely numb, but his muscles were weak and sluggish, allowing him to do little else than stroke his arms over the dirty floor, feebly looking for purchase.

He saw Emm reach for Kodos' arm and tuck him a few steps away. She made eye contact with Lorca and mouthed a 'keep calm' at him.

He hoped Zralisss was taking Sennai away somewhere, too. He wasn't ready to trust the vulcan this early, not when a chance to shatter his disguise was presented to her. Even a vulcan might gather favour by delivering Gabriel Lorca to the empire, after all.

The drone kept hovering over him, a threatening red light shining in his face, ready to stun him again. He forced himself to relax. He wasn't going anywhere for the time being.

A small, but empty circle had formed around him, but what he could make out from people's reaction, the incident wasn't special enough to warrant much interest. Many simply stepped around him on the way to their ferries or shuttles, giving him just a quick glance.

He couldn't see the others anymore and wondered what Kodos would do if Lorca were captured. Take the dilithium back to the Defiant, if he could, and then what? Tyler would want to mount a rescue, but his chances of success would be slim. But even if he managed it, Sennai could the chance to slip away and be lost to him. With no way home, what would he do?

A security guard marched through the crowd as they shuffled hastily out of his way. He stopped over Lorca and irritably waved the drone away before he looked down at Lorca. If he had recognised who he was looking at, his vexed boredom, no doubt, would have given way to something far more dangerous.

"Ah fuck this," the guard muttered, got down to one knee next to Lorca and yanked the side of his coat aside to press a hypospray into his neck. Immediately a tingling spread through Lorca's limbs and he was hauled roughly to his feet by the guard and found he could hold himself up, even if he was swaying slightly.

The guard didn't wait for Lorca to find his balance, he gripped the flap of Lorca's coat and pushed it aside so he could reach for the phaser in its holster at Lorca's left hip to retrieve it.

He held the phaser in his hand, checked its setting before giving Lorca a judging once-over.

"Illegal mods," the guard said. "You should know better."

He gave Lorca a shove against his chest with the phaser, hard enough to nearly make him topple again.

"It's confiscated," the guard said. "Now move the fuck on."

Lorca merely frowned, the scenario assembling itself in his head.

It was Emm's phaser, the one which didn't cause an alert on discharge. Emm had never taken it back when he'd offered it to her in the hotel. It had seemed like a useful tool to keep around.

Lorca swallowed dry, waiting a moment longer until he tried a step forward.

"That could have gone much worse," he said, more to himself, though by then the others had stepped back towards him.

Emm's look was unsympathetic, "He's right, you should've known better."

"Are you concerned for my safety now?" Lorca asked with a slight smile.

"Technically," Emm said, never returning the smile. "We aren't done. You still owe us the matrices and they are important."

She gave him a hard look, some insult ready on the tip of her tongue, but she never delivered it. He didn't think she doubted his intention of going through with the deal fully. Neither she nor Zralisss would have agreed to Zralisss coming with Lorca to the Defiant if either of them expected him to betray them. He would have liked to know which aspect of his story had won her over, but he knew asking wouldn't yield a straight answer. She could simply point at the importance of feeding a lot of people and call it a desperate measure.

"Mr. Basora," Kodos said. "The ferry has been boarding for a while. We should get going."

Lorca nodded, but kept looking at Emm.

"I'd tell you you can trust me," he said. "But where's the point?"

"If I didn't trust you _enough,_" Emm said. "We wouldn't be here."

"Point taken."

He turned to go.

"Take care," he said and meant it.

* * *

In the quiet solitude of the mainframe control room, the harsh tucks of the Defiant's combat manoeuvres were distant and inconsequential. Alibali had tuned it out completely to focus on the computer terminals hovering in front of her, looking for the self-destruct Lorca had implemented.

It seemed strange he would not have asked her aid in such a complex task, but perhaps he had simply chosen not to trust her with it. She wouldn't have said so to his face, but she had doubts of his skill to implement such a programme without error, so perhaps Tyler was right in his concern.

So far, however, she had found no trace of it. The hardcoded, original self-destruct programme was entirely untouched, still with the alterations Lorca had made Alibali put in so only he and he alone could activate and deactivate the sequence.

The door hissed open behind her and she rotated her chair to watch Zhang walk in with an apologetic smile and a tray from the mess hall.

"Hey, I hope you can handle a little distraction," he said as walked towards her and set the tray on an empty spot at the corner of the console.

"Egg salad sandwiches and a strawberry milkshake," Zhang added sheepishly, as if she couldn't tell. "Because I missed lunch."

"They already let you out?" Alibali asked, unable to keep the smile from forming on her face. She reached for one of the sandwiches, only now becoming aware of how hungry she was. Between skipping lunch, helping out in Engineering and this new task Tyler had given her, she'd simply forgotten to eat.

"The benefits of workforce shortage," Zhang said and leaned at the console.

"What did you and Rubau fight over?"

Zhang made a long-suffering sigh. "We have different opinions on the captain," he said. "She thinks if he doesn't like us, there's no reason to like him, so to speak. That it's time to leave him behind and turn to someone better."

"She was advocating for treason?"

"Well, not so openly, but yeah, that's the gist of it. So I told her to shut her mouth, because her shit's ruining my appetite."

"Did you tell Commander Tyler?"

"About losing my appetite?" he grinned.

"No! About Rubau's treasonous talk?"

"I think he already knows," Zhang shook his head sadly. "It's not the first time, I keep hearing this sort of bullshit a lot. More and more, actually and that's never a good sign. Something's going to happen, I guess, let's just hope the captain is back to handle it."

He looked over her screens and after a moment he said, "I guess you aren't allowed to tell me what you're working on?"

"Guessed correctly," she confirmed, but thought of how his expertise might be helpful in finding what she was looking for. She knew she had a certain fixed approach to computer engineering, subhuman as an instructor once called it — and her. The insult notwithstanding, he had had a point. Whatever Lorca had done might be more obvious to a mind untainted by technology.

"Okay then," he smiled at her again and pushed away from the console. "I'll leave you in peace. Are we trying for lunch again tomorrow? I sure hope there are less shitty people there this time."

"Of course."

"It's a date!"

He slipped a hand down her back as he left, somewhere between a friendly gesture and something that made her feel uncharacteristically giddy inside. She wasn't quite sure what to do with the feeling so she just basked in its novelty.

The door opened and he left, just before the door closed, she heard him greet Doctor Ferasini, passing her by in the corridor outside.

* * *

Meanwhile, in the security station at the bottom of the space elevator, a surveillance console began signalling for manual review, as it could not quite make sense of some of the results it was receiving from the security station's own DNA sniffer. The security tech, charged to monitor too many of the damn things was slow to respond. Usually, the alerts were barely more than a malfunction and she had just got herself a freshly brewed cup of coffee. She'd spilled the coffee on a console not so long ago, she was still a little bruised from the punch she'd received from the guy who had to fix it, so she felt she should keep the coffee to the break room until everyone had forgotten about it.

Eventually, the judging look of her colleague got her to put the cup down. No doubt he was going to report her lack of enthusiasm. She sighed in resignation and left the room to see what irrelevant bug had got the system in a twist this time.

* * *

_End of Chapter 6_


	7. …is the Shortest Way Home

**Note: **This is a two-chapter upload!

* * *

**Chapter 7: … is the Shortest Way Home**

* * *

The ferry could barely be called a ship. It consisted of three tubes, stuck together with a cockpit at the front and a warp engine strapped to the back, with a top speed of warp two. Each tube had room for rows of two seats on either side of a narrow aisle. Standing up, Lorca's head was precariously close to the ceiling, and Zralisss had to hunch forward as she walked.

The subtle scent of mould in the air ventilation filled the cabin space and the artificial gravity was shoddy and inconsistent, making walking difficult and sitting uncomfortable.

"I suggest you disengage the seat buckle," Sennai had said from next to Lorca once the ferry had left the dock and shuddered into impulse speed as it left the gravitational pull of Yemuro.

"They function similar to personal agonisers," Sennai had added at Lorca's questioning look.

There was only one other security feature on board, a bored-looking guard, heavily-armed right outside the door to the cockpit.

Looking around the cabin, most people had undone their seat belts as well, though some seem to prefer the slight comfort of them. Strapped in tight to the chair compensated for the iffy gravity and allowed them to doze more comfortably.

Lorca, with the buckle of the seat belt safely tucked away, did his best to settle into the seat. He watched his fellow passengers for a while. They were a quiet crowd, many sleeping some talking quietly and some just staring vacantly into empty air, waiting for the journey to end. Most of them were human, with a few aliens smattered throughout, but both were visibly a very different class of people than what Lorca had encountered in this universe's perversion of Starfleet. These were not arrogant and selfish, terran pride whittled down by the far more mundane daily grind of making it through the day.

The Terran Empire had been built on ruthless ambition and consequently left a majority of its citizens in the dirt. They didn't just enslave alien races, they enslaved their own as well and felt justified in doing it. After all, a _terran _who could not fight their way to the top deserved to be trodden on.

Lorca took his attention away from them to the narrow slit of a window running alongside the cabin to watch the empty black space outside. There was nothing soothing in it, however. The universe didn't care, not this universe and neither his own, it was just an endless expanse of darkness, hostile to life, perfectly bleak and utterly empty. Still, somehow he was glad to be off the planet and among the stars again.

About three hours in, the ferry docked at an asteroid mining station, some passengers left, new ones took their place. They were tired-looking, dragging their bags with them, clogging the aisle when the overhead compartment was already stuffed full.

In the next few hours, the ferry made several more stops. Habitat stations and orbiting factories, security outposts and refuelling stops. The view outside the window barely changed each time, too narrow to offer any kind of meaningful insight.

As they left the inner planetary systems, the stops grew fewer and the time between grew longer. They had another few twelve hours until they reached the outermost proximity of the ferry's course, where the Defiant could swoop in and pick them up.

Lorca felt the tuck of time on his alertness. Next to him, Sennai sat still with her eyes closed, her back perfectly straight. She was not sleeping, but meditating. Probably a better use of time than morosely passing judgement on the people around him, Lorca thought.

In the seat in front of him, Zralisss fidgeted. With her size and the heavy tail, the seat was far too small for her, but she didn't complain. Not that there would have been any use. Kodos was sunk in on himself, looking down on a PADD in his hand, playing chess against the computer.

Just as Lorca contemplated the use of a pin to keep himself sharp for the remainder of the journey, a slight shudder went through the ferry, the artificial gravity pulled on him, making itself felt deep in his chest.

In front of him, Zralisss tensed and leaned around to look at him.

"We've stopped," Lorca said. "Unscheduled."

"Yes," Zralisss confirmed. "There's nothing here to stop for."

"That's not quite true," Sennai said. "There's _someone _here to stop for, isn't there?"

The pieces clicked into place immediately. He didn't need a pin to be wide awake now.

"Me, I guess," Lorca said and Sennai arched one meaningful eyebrow in response.

Lorca gripped the back of the front seat, getting up and leaning towards Kodos.

"Signal the Defiant, we need pickup ASAP," he ordered and didn't wait for Kodos nod and split-second of worried hesitation. The Defiant could pick up the signal and they should be close enough to be there within minutes, but they were far closer to Yemuro's security station than they had planned to be. Tyler would know what it meant if the signal came to early and come ready to fight.

"Zralisss, with me," Lorca snapped, already in the aisle. The aisle didn't allow for a full-speed sprint, but he hurried through the debris of luggage and extended legs as quickly as possible and made it to the front of the cabin just for the security guard to meet him with an aimed phaser rifle.

"Lorca! Down!" Zralisss shouted from behind him and Lorca dropped, but his forward momentum kept him going, sliding over the floor. Through the eyepatch's field of vision, he saw Zralisss yank a young woman from her seat and fling her right into the discharging rifle and the security guard behind it. Snarling, Zralisss closed in right behind, picked the lifeless woman off the security guard and tossed her aside, ripped the rifle from his hands before he had a chance to right it. Zralisss closed her hand around his throat and thrust him into the ceiling.

Lorca would have come back up close to the end of the aisle, but somebody punched his shoulder and knocked him off-course. The mere moments of confusion had passed too quickly and the passengers, it seemed, weren't going to take this lying down. They spilt from their seats, armed with weapons or just their fists. Lorca rolled onto his back and planted his boot into the nearest face, earned enough room to finally get to his feet and used the position to draw the long, slim terran knife from its sheath in his boot.

All moral failings aside, the terrans understood weapons, the knife's hilt moulded into the palm of his hand, making the blade nothing but an extension of his arm. The blade itself was tinted dark and reflected no light. Lorca aligned it against the back of his forearm, so the blade was perfectly concealed and perfectly ready to kill.

He snapped the blade back when someone approached him from behind, drove it into someone's gut with barely any resistance, then forward to punch the hilt into another's throat and make her topple back, gagging for breath.

He couldn't make the last few rows to the front without killing, the passengers were too incensed and too many, they kept piling on and he felt the situation beginning to tip. He didn't know what had them so riled up, not at first, not until a woman, driving at him with a knife of her own, spat '_traitor' _in his face. He slashed her throat wide open, picked up her shoulder and turned her around so the majority of her blood sprayed over the other passengers.

He made it to Zralisss' side, pulled his phaser with his other hand and shot into the crowd indiscriminately, dropping some of them, leaving them screaming and filling the cabin with the scent of burnt flesh. He suppressed a wince and clenched his jaw, but the advance had been stilled. The passengers stopped coming but kept shouting insults in his direction. It wouldn't be long until they'd gathered enough courage for another attack.

"Get the door open," Lorca said, just as Zralisss dropped the security guard, unconscious or dead.

Zralisss tilted her head and said, "You just shoot the lock, I'll get the other two."

Lorca frowned at her, but she didn't seem impressed by his knee-jerk reaction of having his order countermanded. Instead, she walked toward the passengers. Some of them got out of her way, others she had to bodily push and shove, but no one was brave enough to attack her.

Smart choice, then, Lorca decided. If he'd tried to go back for Kodos and Sennai, the crowd would have been too tempted to try something, regardless of the threats he might make.

Time was running short, he knew, but he couldn't turn his back on them without backup, so he took one careful step forward, well out of range of an easy attack by anyone, fixed several people at the front with a bemused look.

"I see you know who I am," he said, conversational tone, but loud enough to carry in the claustrophobic cabin.

They hadn't had time to establish a hierarchy within them, no designated spokesperson, no _plan _for them to pursue, just a collection of reflexive anger. More insults hit him, some of them references to places and events he wasn't aware of it. He let it slide past him.

"Do you think," he said, dropped some of his casual mien. "Your lives matter to me?"

He raised an incredulous eyebrow. Those close to him were beginning to quieten, their expression still hostile, but at least they were listening at all, the first step to rethinking their course of action.

"You don't even matter enough to kill you," he added. He made a show of wiping the knife, dropped to one knee to sheath it. A moment of turning away from them, too short for them to do anything, but enough to make his point.

"Go back to your seats," Lorca said, harder now. "Sit down, wait it out and _don't_ make me kill you."

It wasn't an immediate reaction, no one was keen to be the first to follow, but at the edges, the crowd's determination was beginning to fray, the shouting died down. Somewhere further back, Lorca saw a woman reach for another and say something into her ear, a sharp, calculating look in Lorca's direction.

Zralisss, with Kodos and Sennai in tow, had less trouble making her way back to the front. The moment she would be able to deflect an attack on him, Lorca turned his attention to the cockpit door.

The pilot had had enough time to prepare, so when Lorca shot the look, then pried his fingers into the gap at the side of the door, he fully expected a phaser blast. He stayed behind the door as it opened. Nothing happened.

Lorca shrugged inwardly, went low again and burst through the door. The phaser shot brushed over his head, harmlessly. Lorca got a hold of the wrist, yanked it aside, stepped in close to the pilot and smacked his fist into her face. She swayed, but the cockpit was too narrow and she was wedged between her seat and the wall, unable to fall. Lorca gave her a second hit, just for good measure, then made her drop the phaser before he dragged her out the door. Zralisss picked the pilot up on her collar and helped her further. There was no co-pilot.

Lorca looked back, took a second to review everyone's position.

He said, "Kodos, give Sennai the case." He motioned at Sennai. "And you're with me."

When Kodos had handed over the case, Lorca looked between him and Zralisss, then said, "You two, keep our audience entertained."

He put Sennai in the co-pilot seat and forced the door closed, leaving only a gap wide enough for him to slip through before he sat himself down at the controls.

Like the rest of the ferry, the cockpit system was rudimentary and badly maintained. The ferry barely had any sensors to speak of, shields only designed to protect against small scale space debris and a phaser turret to take handle the slightly larger pieces. The viewscreen projected a security alert message, ordering the pilot to an immediate stop and to await inspection. The alert had been issued seven minutes before, which meant gunboats from Yemuro could be here within twenty minutes or so, half an hour if Starfleet didn't make response an immediate priority. At least they weren't going to blow them up right-away, giving the Defiant a little more time to show up and save the day.

"I would advise against trying to flee," Sennai said.

"Oh yeah?" he asked and flashed her a toothy smile as he put the ferry back into motion, slowly trundle along its predetermined path. They weren't able to outrun the gunboat, but they could buy a few extra minutes for the Defiant.

Almost immediately, they were hailed by one of the gunboats on their tail.

Lorca said, "They are expecting a female voice."

"What do I tell them?"

Lorca shrugged, "My ship, my rules."

He gave her another split second to sort out her thoughts. Vulcans could think fast and on their feet, but usually didn't do so well with limited information. Lorca slipped his fingers over the com controls, found the channel they were on and misaligned it just so. It would lead to minor interference in the call, helping to mask the different voice and Sennai's undoubtedly precise and entire vulcan inflexion.

Sennai tensed ever so slightly, the muscles down her back pulling tight and her face on the verge of a frown. No more than that, and she focussed forward.

"I see," she said.

Lorca opened the channel.

_"Outbound-Ferry-19 you were ordered to stop!"_

"It's a stupid order," Sennai said, making a serviceable attempt at a casual human tone. "You think I didn't figure out who I've got stashed back in the passenger cabin?"

_"You were not informed for a reason."_

"But I have _eyes, _you moron."

_"You will be punished for this insolence, captain. Stop immediately." _

"Now you listen," Sennai said. "Stopping will rock the boat and you don't want that. You just sneak up on us, nobody notices, you beam the bastard off my ship and into an agony booth."

The answer didn't come immediately, a sure sign the officer on the other end was having an epiphany about his tactic and needed to come to terms to how it got dictated to him by a lowly ferry pilot.

Lorca motioned with his hand for Sennai to say something else.

"I mean, unless you want him to massacre everyone on board… _I _certainly don't."

_"I get it now. You're just a coward," _the gunboat officer said finally, just a little satisfied. _"You _will _be punished, but I'm giving you new orders: maintain course, make sure the target remains unaware." _

"Yes, of course."

When Lorca closed the channel, he smiled at her again. "Good job."

She gave no indication the slither of praise was touching her at all, but that was fine, Lorca hadn't expected her to. Winning her over would be a game in the dark anyway, when he would never know if he was making any progress or not. However, vulcans could usually be relied on to make you know if they _disliked _you.

Lorca leaned his back into the seat and watched the stars strewn out beyond the glaring alert message on the screen.

He had never been entirely comfortable with waiting passively for destiny to do a number on him, even back home. Early in his command, he had had the habit of pacing on the bridge. The chair was a nice symbol, but sitting in it had made him feel useless, which in turn made him moody and agitated. His ship's counsellor had told him in no uncertain terms he was creeping his bridge crew out and he needed to stop. So he'd sat himself down and braced himself. Looking back, Tarsus' trauma had still been fresh in him, looking for a way to express itself and staying on the move had been his way to cope. It had got easier as time went on, but there was always the passing thought of resentment, even today. He was old enough to be smart about these things, however. Sometimes the best thing to do was wait and conserve energy for the battles to come.

"They identified you in the space elevator hub," Sennai said after a stretch of silence.

Before he could check his response, he lifted his hand to rub at his neck. The thin layer there felt undamaged, but it didn't mean much in the face of the facts.

"Must have."

"The pressure on you will increase."

"Empress… Emperor? Airiam has done fuck-all to get me declared dead, anyway," he shrugged.

"Yes, but you were a piece of propaganda, she has not expected you to be actually alive. This will change things."

He glanced at her, but only briefly, there was nothing to see in her face if he couldn't hear it in her voice.

"The best course of action, then, is to get me back home, wouldn't you agree?"

"Disregarding the complexities of building what you require," Sennai said. "You do not intend to take anyone with you."

He let the hidden accusation brush off him. He had no handle to determine what Sennai intended with her words, if it was to rile or trip him up. Either way, he had settled himself down to wait patiently, she wasn't a worse stressor than the situation itself already was.

"The other Buran, it was a ship, it travelled between universes. I expect that's what you'll build for me and that's what'll take me home."

"A drive is far more complicated than the one-off displacement of one person."

That did make him look at her, but only to give her a little smile.

"We don't know each other very well yet," he said. "There's no logic in making guesses about my motives."

A tiny muscle between her eyebrows twitched in displeasure at the insult.

He turned his attention back to the console and watched as the gunships closed in on them, the second ticking away. He had gone through the specs of the ferry twice already and found nothing useful there. He briefly considered overcharging what shields they had to stop the gunboats' transporter, or at least stall it for a moment, but he couldn't figure out where the energy for it would be coming from, at least not without blowing the ferry up.

Sucking in a deep breath in resignation he couldn't quite contain, Lorca leaned back in his chair and pulled a small knife from his sleeve. It was barely the length of his hand, bleached white, hilt and blade, with not glint to its edge. He'd spent more time with — and in — the Defiant's otherwise unoccupied agony booths, looking for its weaknesses. The knife had been the first step in a solution, devised to mimic organic structures, it would be difficult for a transporter to tell apart from the actual person. Every other weapon could be filtered out during transport, but this would stay. The next step was the tiny moment after transport and before the booth was activated. The only time when there was a chance the little knife could make a difference.

Lorca hadn't figured out yet how to be fast enough, but perhaps all he needed was the right incentive.

The ferry's scanner finally registered the gunboats and read their IFF. Lorca had hoped there would be another call to the ferry, but all he got was the prickling sensation of the transporter beam washing over him. Sometimes, he thought, beaming should hurt more, being torn apart on a molecular level, transformed entirely into energy. He forced his eyes open, he needed to see where he ended up at, see and _act. _

The transport aborted, leaving him briefly disoriented and nauseous.

Turbulence picked up the ferry, stuttered it from its feeble warp speed into untethered stillness, motion dampeners unable to keep up. An alarm started blaring in the cockpit and then died down again when the ferry lost power.

But Lorca didn't need sensors. The Defiant had dropped out of warp right above them, so close the collapse of her warp bubble had caused the distortion. Close enough, too, to extend her shields around the ferry.

Lorca's communicator beeped and he flipped it open.

"Lorca."

_"Ready for transport?"_ Tyler asked.

"There's one gorn and one vulcan on board, beam them over, too. They are _guests._"

_"We have their life signs." _

"And take me straight to the bridge."

_"Aye, captain." _

The transport felt no different than just a moment before, but it left Lorca standing on the bridge of the Defiant, in the empty space by the turbolift door. The red alert siren beat into his head, comforting in its familiarity regardless of what it meant.

"Captain on the bridge," Tyler announced with a quick grin as he relinquished the captain's chair and retreated to the security station.

"Thank you, commander," Lorca said, fully aware good manners unsettled his terran crew. "Status report." He forced himself down in the captain's chair and settled his hand on the controls there. The screen was set to tactical view, showing the two gunboats which had been in pursuit of the ferry scatter in different directions in an obvious evasive manoeuvre.

"Our structural integrity is only at seventy-three per cent, we've suffered some damage dropping you off. Shields and weapons fully functional, cloak… uh…" Tyler hesitated.

Lorca didn't bother to look at him, he had been trying to train this unwillingness to give bad news out of Tyler and had only partially succeeded.

"Cloak?" Lorca prompted sharply.

"Up to warp five, the cloak may compromise the shields if we use both for… longer."

On screen, the sensors picked out the full force of Yemuro's defences as they mobilise, ready to take on the Defiant within moments. Automated drones, full of photon torpedoes, capable of metaphasic sweeps to render the cloak ineffective. Three _Shamshir-_class combat vessels, otherwise trailing Yemuro's orbit around the sun, turned towards them, following a swarm of gunboats dispersed from the stations around the system. They were too far out for the stationary phaser canons of the inner planetary system, at least.

The smart thing to do would be to leave before that wave arrived and crushed them. "Target the gunboats," Lorca said. "Strip their shields and disable their engines."

The marks on the screen flickered as the computer struggled to compensate for the small ships fast movements but eventually worked out a serviceable predictive pattern, confirming the target lock.

"Fire."

Two short, precise phaser bursts from the Defiant clawed over the gunboats and burned out the power of their shields. One more each took out their engines and set them helplessly adrift. They returned fire instantly, but their phasers glanced off the Defiant's shields with nothing but a slight tremor going through its powerful frame.

"We're being hailed," Zhang said. "One of the _Shamshir _ships."

"Audio only."

"Aye."

_"This is Captain Ella Gilmartin of the ISS Erlik Khan, surrender immediately or be destroyed. This is your only warning." _

The very fact that they had bothered to even give a warning betrayed their confusion. Lorca wondered briefly what the story about the Defiant actually was, which had been fed to the Empire, who they thought commanded it. He would have to ask Marlena about it when he had a chance to speak with her. Either way, they certainly didn't really _know _how to handle it.

"We both know that's not how it works, Captain Gilmartin," Lorca said. He closed the channel directly through his armrest, not wanting to waste any more time.

"Destroy both gunboats and set course towards Yemuro, impulse only."

The gunboats, already dead in the water and defenceless, had nothing left to fight with. The Defiant's phasers rendered them apart effortlessly, scattering their smouldering remains.

The Defiant turned away and took a casual pace towards the advancing defence fleet.

"We're within their weapon's range in one minute, seventeen seconds."

"On my mark, cloak and go to warp three, take us out of here," Lorca said, watching the ships. The first smattering of gunboats would be there before that, but it was only the combat vessels he had to worry about.

Time crawled as the enemy ships came closer, a testament to the sheer enormity of space that at their speed, they still needed so much time just to get from one end of a planetary system to another. Lorca barely bothered to listen to Tyler giving periodic checks of the time, of the combat ships charging their weapons. He felt the first hits of the gunboats as they opened fire. The tremors got stronger each time, now that there were more of them. For a second, Lorca thought of what it would be like to stay and fight, it would be a difficult battle, one he might not win, though by no means impossible. Certainly not if the Defiant were at full strength.

But they weren't and now was not the time. Besides, there was nothing really to gain.

"Now," Lorca ordered.

Just ahead of the first salvo of phaser fire, the Defiant flickered into invisibility, sudden alarms blaring on the bridge as the ship went to warp, taxed systems complained in sprays of blue sparks.

Lorca ordered the ship to maintain cruising speed and not drop the cloak until ordered. He checked with Engineering to learn that Kodos had already delivered the dilithium crystals and they were ready to begin work as soon as Lorca dropped the ship out of warp. Tyler had used the time he'd spent waiting for Lorca to map the area of space for suitable hiding spots, where they could park the Defiant and take care of much-needed repairs.

Lorca left the chair with a nod towards Tyler and retreated to his ready room. Lorca would have preferred to go to his quarters and take a shower, get rid of the damn eyepatch and the costume he'd been wearing. He would do that later, he needed to read the full reports first, make sure Zralisss and Sennai were taken care of and plan the next few steps.

He shrugged off the overcoat and left it on the floor by the door as he stepped to the replicator.

"Cà phê trứng, make it large."

A little slice of home, for once leaving no bitter aftertaste in his mouth, now that he had something tangible to keep him occupied.

* * *

_End of Chapter 7_

* * *

**Author's Note: **Strange times we are living in right now. Take care of yourselves, my friends, and hopefully I offered a momentary distraction.


End file.
